


Freelance Good Guys: Flopper and the Whopper

by TheGreys (alienjpeg)



Series: Looming Gaia [3]
Category: Freelance Good Guys, Looming Gaia, Original Work
Genre: Adventure, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood and Gore, Bullying, Child Abuse, Dragons, Elves, Fantasy, Fat Shaming, Humor, Magic, Natural Animal Violence, Pirates, Teen Protagonist, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 23:30:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 22,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13110795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienjpeg/pseuds/TheGreys
Summary: The Halostiran tundra is an unforgiving place--especially for a child born under the whale's star. Short as a tundra clover and as round as a snowball, Glenvar probably isn't fit to make this cold, harsh journey to the ocean where his true destiny awaits. Will he defy the stars? Or will he swim with the fishes?





	1. Core of the Steam-Serpent

**Author's Note:**

> This story is the third part in the Freelance Good Guys series. It can be read on its own, but the ending will make a little more sense if you read "Monster by Moonlight" and "The Perfect Shot" first.
> 
> Visit this post for concept art, lore, and more stuff about the world of Looming Gaia: http://mythicalshoes.tumblr.com/post/165447246045/looming-gaia-lore-masterpost

 

##  **[CHAPTER 1: CORE OF THE STEAM-SERPENT]**

 

     _WINTER, 5978_

 

     In the language of _Volkaspek_ , Halostira meant "Holy Woman". Ths continent was named after an ancient goddess who birthed the continent itself.

 

     Conversely, _kirk_ was crude slang for male genitalia while _mar_ meant “death” or “mutilation”, depending on context.

 

     Kirkmar literally translated to “mangled phallus”. The name piqued outsiders’ curiosity as much as it drove them away. It summed up the village's way of life, their social structures, and their justice system in but a word. Only the native people of Kirkmar could really understand all the intricacies and absurd wonders of this place.

 

     Oggsa Thunderhorn was such a person. She was the Grand Warrior of Kirkmar, responsible for leading its raids and defending its borders. Her body was a mass of fat and muscle wrapped in polar bear furs, windburned face framed by four yellow braids. Her bloodline was human, she claimed, though she looked and smelled much like the hulking boar she rode upon.

 

     Oggsa stopped for nothing and compromised for no one. In the latest of winter, she marched on through the enchanted forest which separated Kirkmar from an enemy tribe of elves. These crafty elves could make anything grow anywhere with their magic. They had many resources for her people's taking.

 

     The trees of this forest were unlike those in Noalen. The trunks were glittery-silver and the branches weeped like willows, and so it was called “Silvertrunk Glen”. In place of leaves were white petals and bulbs of green fruit. Oggsa knew these magical trees would wither and die in the care of human hands, for humans could not wield the arcane power to maintain them.

 

     That’s why they were making this journey once more, to raid the elves and take from them what has already been harvested. Rarely did the elves put up a fight anymore, surrendering their goods twice a year in exchange for their lives. Oggsa’s soldiers were just too mighty with all their iron weapons, vicious war dogs, and boar-mounted cavalry.

 

     Another cramp shot up Oggsa’s back, like a lightning strike from the angry storm in her belly. She bared her teeth at the sky, clutched the boar’s reigns in a trembling, gloved fist, and she endured. Fat flakes of snow were falling no slower than rain. The wind howled between the trees and whipped their weeping branches.

 

     Oggsa was as pregnant as the Holy Woman, certain she was about to birth a continent herself. Yet here she was, leading a battalion through a swelling blizzard. The blizzard part wasn’t the issue, at least not in her eyes. Her real concern was the destiny of this babe, her third child.

 

     If they were born today under the sign of the whale, they were destined to a faraway life at sea. But should they make their debut tomorrow under the sign of the boar, they would follow their mother’s footsteps as a proud warrior. Oggsa was getting older and conceiving this one had been hard enough.

 

     She knew well that this was her last chance for a boar-sign heir, and all the pride and respect that came with such luck. What prestige such a child would have right out of the womb, someday taking their mother's place as Grand Warrior! What pride Oggsa would feel, finally passing down her skills to a worthy—

 

     The lightning struck her spine again, white stars blinding her eyes. The Grand Warrior doubled over her lumbering mount. Concern grew heavier upon her commander’s face, who rode up beside her and spoke over the wind.

“Mighty Thunderhorn, should we make camp and wait out the storm?” he asked.

 

     Righting her posture once more, Oggsa replied through clenched teeth, “No! Ride on, ya jelly-boned bastard! Speak out of line again and I’ll crack ya one across the lips, ya hear me?” Despite the roadmap of scars and tattoos upon his bearded face, the commander shrank away from the back of Oggsa’s raised hand like a scolded puppy.

 

     They marched under the canopy of whipping branches, through the deepening snow. Wind howled all around, a cacophony of shrieking ghosts masking every threat the Grand Warrior growled to her belly. “It’s not your time,” she repeated over and over. “It’s not your time, it’s not your time, you brat!”

 

     Oggsa thumped her forehead on the knob of her saddle as another contraction hit. “Meet me now,” she muttered, “and yer first feckin’ day will be yer _worst_ feckin’ day, Child! But meet me tomorrow, and I swear I’ll spoil ya absolutely foul for the rest of yer—”

“Mighty Thunderhorn? Are you _bargaining_ with the babe?” queried the commander.

 

     Whipping her head to the right, she saw his chapped lips twisted into the tiniest smirk. She and the commander went back decades, but she was hardly in the mood for his jokes now. Oggsa leaned over to crack him one just like she promised, but never made the delivery.

 

     Instead, she fell off her mount and delivered a whale-star babe.

 

*

 

     Elgavara was Oggsa’s first child. She was born in late spring under the sign of the _elga_ —or caribou. She was destined to work the _elga_ ranch with the other _elga_ -born and so she did without question.

 

     Hundelgi was Oggsa’s second child, born in summer under the sign of the wolf. Wolves were called “ _grupphund”_ in _Volkaspek_ , which translated to “pack-dog”. As soon as she could wield a spear, Hundelgi formed a pack with the other wolf-born and became a hunter, just as the signs dictated.

 

     Oggsa’s third child, she named Glenvar. She regrettably gave birth to him under the whopper—or whale, though his name did not reflect that. His name meant “born in the forest” and Oggsa spat it with disdain, for his first sight should have been the barracks where she planned to birth him two weeks later.

 

     The boy spent his days playing in the streets of Kirkmar while his older sisters worked. His mother was training recruits at the barracks all day, every day, until it was time for action. Aimless were the poor whopper-born in Kirkmar, as the coast was miles and miles away.

 

     The settlement sat atop a mountain jutting up from the flat tundra where the herds of _elga_ roamed, along with all their fearsome predators like dragons, bears, and _grupphund_. It was summer and the weather was not so harsh. This time of year, the white icy desert around the mountain melted away and exposed a vast field of growth; short grasses all in warm hues.

 

     The air was still bitter-cold. Glenvar was dressed in a big _elga_ skin coat lined with _grupphund_ fur—the standard fashion of his people. His boots were so stiff, his layers so thick, he was little more than a furball waddling his way to market with an overstuffed bag on his back.

 

     Hundelgi had given him furs to sell. He hauled them to a long building of stone and bone with a dramatic A-frame roof, towering higher than all the other buildings in Kirkmar. Smoke billowed from its many chimneys and there were no windows, no ways for the cold to sneak in.

 

     Glenvar opened the door of driftwood and skins just enough to squeeze through, closing it quickly behind him. If he didn’t close it fast enough, the adults would yell. Inside this building was the market, where villagers and outsiders could exchange their goods.

 

     This market was the lifeblood of the village. It’s where everyone got their woods and metals, for Halostira was lacking in both. Most importantly it’s where the villagers got their slosh, which kept their bones warm and numbed their minds to the nine months of gray skies they endured every year.

 

     The smell of burning fat wafted through the air. It was dim here in the market, illuminated by caged pits of fire planted in the center of the building beneath iron chimneys. There were three total and the people gathered around them for warmth as they chattered.

 

     Vendors, too, had their own lamps and candles to showcase their wares in the most flattering light (or not, if they wished to hide poor quality in the darkness). Glenvar maneuvered through the crowd, pushing oblivious adults out of his way. He was only as tall as their behinds and so he was always going unseen.

 

     Finally he found his buyer, a troll known only as “Xydoz”. Xydoz sat upon a worn, dirty _elga_ pelt with his wares, a quarter-ton creature with leathery green skin. His face and body structure was not unlike a great ape. Yellow fangs curved out from his bottom jaw, chin glistening with drool.

 

     Straight red hair grew from Xydoz’s head and stuck out every which way, held in place by weeks of its own grease. He was dressed in a simple shawl and skirt of fur, clawed hands and feet wrapped with strips of leather. Glenvar finally dropped his heavy pack before the troll and greeted, “You better buy ‘em all, Xydoz, ‘cause I ain’t haulin’ these back home again!”

 

     Drool oozed from the troll’s chin and splattered onto the floor as he reached for a pelt. He brought it to his bulbous nose and inhaled, turned it around and squinted his pale eyes. “Good quality,” he rumbled. His gaze flicked up to the boy. “Ten gold piece each.”

 

     “Thirty,” Glenvar insisted.

The troll shook his head. “Fifteen like last time.”

“Ma was mad about last time! She said no lower than twenty-five and that’s that.”

“Not need furs in warm season. Xydoz pay fifteen!”

 

     The boy pulled his hood down, long yellow hair falling over his chubby face. It was all twisted in a scowl. “Come on, I wanna go home! Just give me twenty-five!” he whined.

“Twenty,” said the troll.

“I said twenty-five!”

“Xydoz pay twenty, no more!”

 

     Glenvar’s face flushed red, jaw set tight. He blurted, “Well, if you ain’t gonna budge then I challenge you to a throwdown!” The last word turned a few heads. The people of Kirkmar loved only one thing more than slosh, and that was violence. Disagreements were settled honorably with a “throwdown”—whoever's back hit the ground first was the loser.

 

     Xydoz cocked his head in befuddlement, staring at the round little human before him. Finally he tossed his head back and let out a hearty, gravelly, laugh. Glenvar’s fists were clenched inside his big fur mittens, slowly uncurling as the people around him giggled too.

 

     His cheeks turned from angry-red to bashful-pink. The troll settled his laughter, dragging one black claw under his eye to flick away his tears. “Okay. You make Xydoz laugh, so Xydoz pay twenty-five,” he said. With that, he counted out the coins in his massive palm before dropping them in Glenvar’s mittens.

 

     The boy frowned down at the coins. He looked back up at Xydoz and muttered, “I wasn’t bein’ funny. I’m serious, I was gonna fight!”

The troll shook his head with a crooked grin. “Not fair fight. Why baby human try to fight big scary troll?”

 

     Glenvar stuffed the coins into his coat pocket. “A big, scary troll ain't half as scary as my ma,” he said.

 

*

 

     So north was Halostira that in the summer, the sun only dipped below the horizon for 2 hours each night. There was still plenty of daylight as the Thunderhorn family gathered in their home late that evening, the same routine as always. Their house was one of many identical buildings in a long row, built of stone and bone and insulated with skins.

 

     The base was subterranean while the roof jutted above the ground at sharp points, preventing any snowfall from gathering above. Its X-shaped layout featured the sitting room in the center with four tiny bedrooms separated by skin curtains. There were no windows and no natural light.

 

     Hundelgi lit a candle while Elgavara loaded animal fat into the iron oven. A light aroma wafted from the big beeswax candle, melting atop a dish made from some unfortunate human’s skull. Oggsa would be home soon and her children rushed to prepare the house to her liking.

 

     The house had more vertical space than horizontal with its high ceilings. Nets were stretched across bone beams above, holding whatever clutter didn’t fit on the floor. When the sisters wanted to keep something out of their little brothers’ grasp, they stored it up there.

 

     Glenvar watched his teenage siblings whisper to one another before Hundelgi dug something out from the nets. It was an amber bottle of slosh, corked and half-full. Hundelgi took a swig, then passed it to Elgavara. Glenvar tilted his head and queried, “Is that yours? How’d you get yer own slosh?”

 

     “None of yer business, _rundhund_ ,” Hundelgi replied. After her drink, Elgavara pulled a copper pot out of the oven. It was full of snow before, now just water. She funneled it into the bottle until it was roughly half-full again, then corked it and stuffed it back into the nets.

 

     Glenvar’s yellow eyebrows shot up and he gasped, “That’s Ma’s slosh! She’s gonna crack ya one good fer that, both of ya!”

“Hush!”

“Shut yer gob!” the sisters barked in unison. They were both tall like their mother, Hundelgi shaped like a beanstalk and Elgavara like an apple.

 

     Hundelgi’s nose was like a falcon’s beak and her hair was just slightly darker than Glenvar’s, pulled into two braids. Elgavara wore her hair in just one braid and her jaw seemed to dominate her face much like their mother. She told Glenvar, “You say a word about that slosh and I’ll sit on ya.”

 

     “It’s watered down! She’s gonna know!” the boy cried. His tone was more frantic with every word.

“Pirates sell crummy piss-water all the time,” said Hundelgi. “She won’t suspect a thing.” Slabs of hare meat cooked in the oven, fresh from her catch today. Elgavara laid a _rundhund_ —or seal—skin over the low driftwood table to protect it from spills.

 

     _Rundhund_ roughly translated to “round dog”. Their skin repelled liquids nicely, like the yak’s milk Glenvar clumsily poured into four stoneware cups. He stepped outside to put the milk jug back in the frost-box by the door, only to jump with fright at the tall figure standing before him.

 

     There was Oggsa, brushing the snow off her boots. The glass jug nearly slipped from her son’s grip but he regained his hold, clutching it for dear life against his chest. “Ma, ya scared me!” he exclaimed. Oggsa regarded him with a scowl, her face smeared with black coal warpaint.

 

     She grumbled, “’Course I did. I’m scary. Get back in the house with those bare arms, Boy!” and the boy quickly shut the milk away before rushing back inside. Oggsa followed closely behind, buttoning the door-flap behind her. Elgavara and Hundelgi sat around the table, spines arrow-straight with big toothy smiles spread across their faces.

 

     “Welcome back, Ma!” they said together. Oggsa paid them the faintest smile as she slipped off her coat, slung it over a beam stretching across the ceiling.

“Evenin’ to you, _stiras_ ,” she greeted. Then she sat down beside them, rubbed her cold hands together and turned to Hundelgi. “And what has Kirkmar’s fiercest hunter dragged home for us?”

 

     Hundelgi hesitated. She fingered her braids with anxious, calloused fingers and answered, “Well, uh, only a couple hares. Not a lot of action in the fields today, ya know, we’re competin’ with the bears and—”

“Listen to ya!” Oggsa barked, slamming her fist on the little table. The children jumped and the dishes rattled, Glenvar catching his cup just before it tipped.

 

     “Are these _excuses_ I hear?” Oggsa continued. She pointed an accusing finger at Hundelgi, and the girl—for all her muscle and scars—shrank back like a baby lamb in a wolf’s presence. “Your mother’s crackin’ skulls in the godforsaken tundra from dawn ‘till dusk, and all she asks is a decent meal when she gets home. Ungrateful, lazy, brat you are, Hundelgi!”

 

     “Yer right, Ma. Sorry, Ma,” the girl said quickly, tipping her head low. Oggsa snorted with disdain, swiping a rag from the pile of clutter nearby. She spit upon it and then used it to wipe the coal from her face.

“Two hares…” she mumbled. “Can’t feed a damn _hund_ with two hares. Elgavara, what about you?”

 

     The eldest sister proudly replied, “Well, _I_ earned a whole bucket of fat today! Should keep the fire burnin’ all week long.”

 

     Oggsa’s scowl relaxed a bit. With a nod of approval, she praised, “Of course my Elgavara does as she should. My first-born babe, closest to my heart.”

 

     Then finally, she turned to Glenvar. “Boy?” she queried. Glenvar’s big blue eyes flashed up at her.

He swallowed, stammered, “Um, I did just like ya said, Ma. I sold the furs and I got twenty-five GP each, just like ya said.”

“Twenty-five?” The woman bellowed. “Why didn’t ya ask thirty?”

 

     “I did!” cried Glenvar. “He—he wouldn’t do it! I was gonna throw down with him and everything, but he just laughed at me!”

“Ya let a dirty, sloppy old troll laugh at ya?”

“I tried, Ma! I really did!”

 

     “Boy—” Oggsa raised her hand at the child and he shrank back with a wince. His sisters waited with still breath, but the impact never came. Oggsa froze there for a moment, then lowered her hand back to the table.

 

     “I’m gonna teach ya somethin’, Glenvar, so listen good,” she began, “Half the battle is muscle and the other half is attitude. Yer a snivelin’, sorry little rodent. But even a bear won’t eat a rodent when it’s hissin’ and snappin’ like it’s got nothin’ to lose.”

 

     Oggsa leaned forward on her elbows. She went on, “Be fierce and be relentless. Don’t let up ‘till ya get yer way. Understand?” The boy met her eyes and quickly nodded. Elgavara pulled the hare meat from the oven and divided their meager portions.

 

     “Got plenty of milk, Ma,” mentioned Hundelgi. Oggsa pushed her cut away and stood up, began digging through the nets above.

“I don’t want no milk. Where’s my good stuff?” she muttered. The children exchanged nervous glances, stuffing their mouths with food while their mother uncorked the bottle.

 

     The room fell into dead silence except for Oggsa’s thin lips smacking off the glass. She stared at the neck, furrowed her brow. Her children glanced up at her before focusing intensely on their plates. They jumped when she suddenly bellowed, “What’s wrong with my slosh? Tastes like puddle-water!”

 

     All three children remained silent, exchanging their winces as she tasted another sip. Oggsa regarded them with suspicion all over her face. Her tone was low and slow when she asked, “Which one of you was it?”

Glenvar quickly piped up, “I bet it was pirates, Ma! They’re always sellin’—”

 

     And then he fell silent when he turned, realized his sisters were both pointing right at him. The smack Oggsa spared him earlier finally came, and with a vengeance.

 

*

 

     Years came and went and with them passed Glenvar’s 13th birthday. Elgavara was a grown woman now, yet she hadn’t married, hadn’t moved out of her family home. No man she introduced to Oggsa impressed her, and so she was not given permission.

 

     Instead of raising a family of her own, Elgavara remained at the Thunderhorn house to care for her siblings. They relied on her to keep food on the table after Oggsa’s accident. She’d been clubbed in the back by a troll during a brutal raid last season. Now she walked with a staff.

 

     “Another week and I’ll be back to work,” Oggsa would say, as she’d been saying for weeks upon weeks. Her children were doubtful. Someone had to wait on her and that someone was Glenvar. He was just as short and egg-shaped as he was three years ago, struggling to carry a big bundle of driftwood home from the market.

 

     The sticks were as long as he was. He held them over his shoulder and thwacked someone every time he turned down a narrow street. The weather was mercifully calm this mid-autumn day. The tundra below the mountain looked like a white sheet stretched over the land.

 

     Two older boys were pelting eachother with snow ahead. Glenvar recognized them—Hrolfi and Stanvar—and decided to give them a wide berth. He tugged his fur-lined hood over his face and pressed on down the pathway.

 

     Identical A-framed houses surrounded him on either side, with a hazy layer of smoke floating above. It rose from the chimneys at all hours and gave the air a heavy, abrasive smell that the villagers had grown accustomed to. To Glenvar, burning animal fat just smelled like home.

 

     He knew his house from the rest because each one had a unique image painted on the doorflap. They were triangular grids with animal symbols in the squares, representing each member of the family. The Thunderhorns’ crest depicted a boar and a falcon at the top, with a caribou, wolf, and whale below. The falcon was crudely smeared over with coal.

 

     Despite his best efforts, the older boys recognized Glenvar as he passed. Every one of his muscles tensed when he heard Hrolfi bark, “Where ya goin’, dworf-boy?” Glenvar remained silent and kept moving. He got eight paces ahead before the boys stepped in his way.

 

     “Did I ask ya a question or not?” queried Hrolfi. Stringy blond hair was stuck to his face, wet with melted snow. His eyes were icy and as piercing as any spear. Stanvar stood just a bit taller, though both of them towered over Glenvar. Stanvar’s lips were terribly chapped with red lines where they’d cracked.

 

     Glenvar shoved between them and grumbled, “I got no time for the likes of ya. Get lost.” He walked on for another eight or nine paces before something jerked him back. The Thunderhorn boy fell backwards and his driftwood bundle broke apart, scattering onto the snowy ground.

 

     Two faces crowded his view of the clouded sky. Stanvar glowered down at him and said, “Yer gonna be a cess-mouth, are ya?”

“’Course I am, ya made me eat yellow snow the other day!” growled Glenvar. He struggled to his feet and gave each of them a shove. “Feck off, ya scum. I gotta get all this junk home.”

 

     He began gathering up the driftwood once more. Stanvar stepped forward and slapped it out of his hands, then Hrolfi shoved him back into the snow. “Got a lotta nerve fer someone yer size,” Hrolfi told him. “I bet yer ma got _kirked_ by a dworf!”

“I bet yer ma got _kirked_ by her brother,” retorted Glenvar, and not a second later Hrolfi’s boot collided with his head.

 

     Stanvar seized the Thunderhorn boy by his hood and yanked it over his face, holding him in place while Hrolfi beat on him with his fists like swinging hammers. Glenvar’s shouts were muffled under his hood as he twisted and flailed. His thick coat absorbed most of the blows.

 

     “Miss Grand Warrior ain’t gonna save ya now,” Hrolfi panted, “My pa’s gonna take her place for good!” Glenvar knew that was probably true. Hrolfi’s father had been Oggsa’s commander for years, and the longer she was laid up, the less likely she was to see the battlefield again.

 

     But Glenvar did just as she said and kept fighting despite the odds, kept running his mouth too. He wriggled his jaw out from his hood and blurted, “Yer pa’s yer uncle!” It earned him a pop in the teeth, but the boy regretted nothing. He was terribly outmatched and roughed up until his clothes were smeared with dirt and blood, yet he never surrendered.

 

     Casual violence was part of growing up in Kirkmar. Adults walked by without a second glance, stepping over the mess of scattered driftwood as the boys scuffled in the dirty snow. Glenvar snagged one of the smaller pieces and whacked Hrolfi across the face with it.

 

     That only encouraged the older boys to pick up bigger pieces and start clubbing him. Glenvar gnashed his teeth and shut his eyes tight, refused to shed a tear. Tears were grounds for punishment in his culture, but especially in his household. “Tears are for babes,” Oggsa once told him. “Don’t cry, else they’ll freeze in yer eyes and you’ll go blind.”

 

     Whether that was true or not, Glenvar didn’t intend to find out. After what felt like a lifetime, someone finally intervened. Hrolfi and Stanvar were grabbed by the collars of their coats and lifted off their feet by a familiar young woman with her hair in two braids.

 

     She wore white furs with an arsenal of weapons slung around her broad shoulders; bow, quiver of arrows, dagger, and spear. Special glasses were pushed up to her forehead, a slab of wood with two narrow, horizontal slits to see through. They prevented snow blindness in the tundra—which is where she, Hundelgi, had been hunting all day.

 

     The two boys dropped their sticks and their wide eyes flashed up at her. Hundelgi tossed them down into the snow and growled, “Why don’t ya pick a fair fight? Two of you equals one of me, so come on, let’s throwdown!”

 

     Hrolfi and Stenvar exchanged wary glances. They and Glenvar picked themselves up and brushed away the snow caked onto their clothes. A silence passed. Hundelgi planted her hands on her hips, cocked her head and went on, “Oh, suddenly yer not so brazen, are ya? Couple of teat-sucklers, you are.”

 

     Her gaze shifted to Hrolfi. “What would the commander say, Hrolfi, if I told him you were roughin’ up kids half yer size?” she asked, and the boy’s eyes rounded like the sun.

He clasped his gloved hands together and begged, “Don’t tell him, Hundelgi! Please! I’ll be good, I won’t do it no more! I’ll be good as gold!”

 

     Stanvar stood there quietly, rubbing at his arm. Hundelgi turned to him and said, “And I don’t know who you are, but I’ll track down yer pa and I’ll tell him too! Now both of you get outta my sight before I crack ya one myself.” Without a second’s hesitation, the boys turned and bolted.

 

     Their boots slipped and slid down the path until they rounded a corner and disappeared. Glenvar furrowed his brow at the ground, fists clenched at his sides. He couldn’t wait for the day he grew from a boy into a _maska_ —a tall, strong, and respectable man. There was nothing respectable about being short and plump as a baby seal.

 

     He began collecting the driftwood once more. Hundelgi kneeled and gathered some too as she assured him, “Ya put up a good fight, Glenvar. I didn’t step in ‘till it started lookin’ bad.” She swiped the blood from his lip with the knuckle of her leather glove.

 

     The boy grumbled, “I’ll fight my own fights.”

“With that mouth of yours? You’ll get killed, that’s what you’ll do.”

“Ya don’t have to treat me like a baby just ‘cause I’m small, Hundelgi!” cried Glenvar, his chubby face flushed pink. He snagged the driftwood from her hands, loaded it onto his shoulder and stormed off down the path.

 

     Hundelgi trotted up close behind. “Look,” she began, “bein’ small doesn’t mean anything. If yer opponent’s too tall, ya just have to bring ‘em down to yer level,” she said. Glenvar raised an eyebrow at her.

“What do ya mean?”

“Like in the field,” replied Hundelgi, “when we hunt _elga_. How do ya think we bring down a beast twice our size?”

 

     A pause. Glenvar had never really thought about it. He just knew his sister left at the crack of dawn and came back at dusk with dinner. “I dunno,” he admitted.

“Like this,” said she, and Glenvar yelped as she kicked the back of his shin.

 

     The boy went down and his driftwood scattered once more. A second later, Hundelgi was squatting over him. He froze as the blade of her hunting knife stopped just an inch before plunging into his neck. She said, “Don’t ever fear a giant. Bigger they are, harder they fall.”

 

     “I get it,” Glenvar rasped. With that, she stood up and tucked the knife back in its sheath. She extended a hand and helped her brother up once again, then they continued down the road. They meandered around playing children, busy adults, and wandering livestock.

 

     After a silence, the boy asked, “What are you doin’ back before dark anyway?”

His sister shrugged. “I got errands,” she said.

“ _Errands_? Is that his name?”

 

     Hundelgi rolled her eyes and gave him a shove. Glenvar snickered, “Ya know Ma won’t like him. He could be son of the chief himself and she would say he ain’t good enough.”

“I know,” his sister sighed. “She’ll keep me ‘n Elgie around just to put food on the table ‘till she dies.”

“And slosh,” added Glenvar.

 

     Hundelgi paused, looking up at the gray sky. “Yer lucky, Glen,” she began. “You only got one more year in this place. I’d swap places with ya if I could, but the stars wanted me to slave away in Kirkmar, so I guess I have no say in it. I’ll turn gray and die here.”

 

     A sad little smile crossed her face as she continued, “You’ll get to see the big blue—maybe even the whole _world_! Ya know there’s a place called _The Midlands_ where it never snows? No snow, not ever. That’s what I heard.” The notion was straining Glenvar’s imagination.

He turned to Hundelgi and queried, “But if there’s no snow, how do they get water?”

 

     “I think it falls from the sky,” she said slowly, unsurely.

“Wow…” Glenvar gasped. He imagined great waterfalls pouring from the clouds, and all the people emerging from their homes with buckets to collect it.

 

     Leaving the village filled him with equal parts excitement and dread. What his people knew of the world outside Halostira was just hearsay from drunken traders at the market. Only two types were destined to leave Kirkmar and see it for themselves: the whopper-born and the hopeless outcasts.

 

     Next year he would say goodbye to Kirkmar, unlikely to return, for it was becoming clear that he was one of those outcasts too.

 

*

 

     By late winter, the frost nymphs had claimed the whole Red Tundra. They were known as “isanae”—beings of pure magic who left ice everywhere they stepped. They shaped themselves like beautiful women with stark-white skin, and hair so fine that it floated around their heads like fog.

 

     They drifted down from the clouds in autumn and danced across the vast plain until every inch was frozen over. Their floral sisters—the limniads—buried themselves underground to escape their icy touch and would emerge again in spring.

 

     Glenvar followed his mother down the mountain and across the flat wasteland below. She hobbled about with her driftwood staff like a woman twenty years her senior. Her injured back had healed, though crooked. There was no chance she would lead Kirkmar to battle again.

 

     So she led her son to battle instead, one last lesson before he left for the blue. He watched the isanae in the distance, spinning, twirling, skipping across the land without a care. The weather had calmed just enough to make this journey, wherever Oggsa was taking them. She loudly sang old _Volkaspeken_ folk songs all the while. They were ancient, abrasive songs sung from the depths of the throat.

 

     Glenvar interrupted her tune and groaned, “We’ve been movin’ fer hours, Ma. I can’t feel my toes!” Snow glasses covered his eyes, much like the ones his sister wore hunting. Oggsa shook her head and snorted with disdain.

 

     She replied, “If ya can’t handle a little trip like this, what makes ya think you’ll make it to the coast? That’s why we’re out here. Shut yer gob, you’ll see soon enough.” Pushing her glasses up to her forehead, Oggsa surveyed the land from left to right and croaked her songs once more. Her gaze swept over the horizons of blinding white against stormy gray, with only silhouettes of dancing nymphs to break up the monotony.

 

     More time passed. Glenvar wasn’t sure how long exactly, for his mind was already lost at sea. Xydoz once told him of his home village, a place called Toraag, which was located on an island just south of Halostira. He said Toraag was a colony of trolls, where many spent their entire lives underground without a single glimpse of the sun.

 

     Oggsa fell silent and stopped in her tracks. Glenvar’s absent mind sent him bumping right into her. She delivered a slap to the back of his head and pressed her finger to her lips, pointing the other ahead. Glenvar lifted his glasses and squinted. The isanae had stopped dancing, seemed anxious about something unseen.

 

     “Get yer axe, Boy,” muttered Oggsa, and Glenvar pulled the rusty old hand-axe from his belt. It had belonged to his mother once, supposedly the first weapon she ever slaughtered a man with. Glenvar had slaughtered no one before, no man nor monster. He gripped the handle tightly, knuckles white beneath his fur mittens, and he watched as the frost nymphs suddenly scattered.

 

     They bolted away from nothing at all, or so it seemed. Oggsa pulled the shield off her back, a round piece of wood and leather, and fastened it to her left forearm. In her right, she held her staff of gnarled driftwood. She moved forward with Glenvar in tow and her ugly song filled the quiescence.

 

     The boy had so many questions, but he dared not speak as they sneaked ahead. The isanae had disappeared, hiding away from whatever it was, wherever it was. Furrowing his brow, Glenvar’s eyes were losing focus. The whiteness was so bright, so endless—

 

     And then broken apart when a fissure opened in the snow. A giant creature reared its head of twisted horns, long-necked and coated with blue scales which shimmered like ice. Its head was skeletal in structure with no eyes at all, only a flat plate of bone. Its head alone was as long as Glenvar was tall.

 

     “There ya are! Come get it, ya big bastard!” Oggsa cried, bashing the staff against her shield. The noise seemed to irritate the dragon. It shook its head and let out a hiss before diving back into the snow. Glenvar’s heart skipped a beat. He turned all around, feeling tremors beneath his feet but could see nothing.

 

     “Ma! W-where’d it go? What do I do?” he panicked, and then he was launched into the air as the creature surfaced below him. Glenvar landed harmlessly in a snow drift. His heart hammered in his ears, eyes unblinking at the sight of a great serpent twisting out of the frozen ground.

 

     Now he could see it form head to tail—a long snake with hard scales and fangs like icicles. Its belly was pale and fleshy, but hardly exposed as it slithered along in the snow. It disregarded him completely and circled Oggsa, who met it with a big belly-laugh and a drumbeat against her shield.

 

     “Watch me now, Glenvar,” she called to her bewildered child. “This is how ya slay a behemoth!” She stepped this way and that, pounding a loud beat against her shield and taunted it all the while.

Slipping and staggering, Glenvar finally got to his feet and shouted, “Have ya lost yer damn mind? Yer a shamblin' old _stira_! Ya can’t slay a—”

 

     The beast raised its head high, exposed its fleshy neck for but a second before surging forward. It rammed its snout against Oggsa’s shield and she grunted, staggering back. She stabbed the snow with her staff to hold her ground. Glenvar’s face flushed red. Rage and fear coursed through his veins and sent him flying into action.

 

     His voice cracked as he cried out, bringing his axe down on the serpent’s scaly hide with all his might. It was no different than driving a blade into a solid chunk of ice. The creature seemed far more offended by his noise than his violence, and it swatted him away with its tail like a bothersome pest.

 

     Glenvar went tumbling across the ground. The axe flew from his grip and became lost somewhere in the snow. He frantically dug about for it while his mother screamed obscenities at the twenty-foot-long dragon ahead. Her voice was loud and grating to anyone. A disturbing cacophony to the blind beast which lived its life by ear, listening for the soft pitter-patter of tasty hares who crossed its domain.

 

     The tundra was a vast place, a cold place, a dangerous place—but more notably, it was a _quiet_ place. There were no trees, no boulders to reflect sound, and the snow only absorbed it. The tundra was a place without echoes, only the breath of the wind and nymph’s lullabies.

 

     Glenvar watched his mother helplessly, in utter disbelief as she only marched _closer_ to the icy behemoth, shouting and banging against her shield. The dragon recoiled with every boom. It wriggled back to escape the sound, gusting hot steam at her from its maw.

 

     The steam was hot enough to burn, had Oggsa been wearing fewer layers. She quickly pulled her snow-glasses over her eyes and shielded the bottom half of her face with her arm. She reeled back in a coughing fit and jeered, “That’s how ya wanna play, huh?”

 

     She turned her back to the dragon as it blasted another load of steam from its belly. Oggsa dropped her staff and hunched over, doing what, Glenvar couldn’t tell from his angle. And how this creature could be cold as ice on the outside while hot as flame on the inside, he couldn’t understand. His axe was nowhere and the terrain was a mess of serpent-tracks, footprints, and piles of displaced snow.

 

     The dragon ran out of steam and slowly inhaled for another go. Before it could deliver, Oggsa turned around with a bottle of slosh in one hand and an oil lighter in the other. The slosh sprayed from her lips and ignited, blasting the dragon with flame. It whipped back with a sharp hiss and she blasted it a second time, then a third.

 

     “Doesn’t feel good, does it?” the woman taunted. She took a swig of the slosh before tossing both items aside, picking up her staff once more. Meanwhile the dragon undulated in the snow, trying desperately to soothe the burns on its fleshy belly.

 

     Suddenly it reared back and struck again like a drunken viper. Oggsa’s reflexes were as sharp as ever, as she jammed her staff upwards and met its gaping mouth. The staff became lodged there between its jaws, and for the moment it could not close its mouth. The dragon reared back again, this time in a panic, tossing its head this way and that.

 

     Oggsa hobbled a few feet away, stuck her hand deep into the snow and retrieved Glenvar’s lost axe. Like the swift swing of a lumberjack, she chopped deep into its exposed belly and ripped the weapon downward, opening a slice as long as she. She recoiled as steam and boiling blood blasted out from the wound.

 

     White snow was drenched in red, melting away under the dragon’s bubbling innards while they spilled out in its panic. It whipped back and forth, up and down, contorting its body into twisting knots. Its tail collided with Oggsa and sent her spinning down into the red snow.

 

     It was then that Glenvar unfroze from his fear and awe, stumbled forth and threw himself over her. He shielded her with his back, felt splatters of burning goo and heard it sizzle against his coat. The dragon’s agonized hisses died to rasps, and then there was only the sound of its guts gurgling in its corpse.

 

     Oggsa jammed her elbow into the boy’s ribs. “Get off me!” she growled, and the boy quickly obeyed. He offered a helping hand and she slapped it away, grunting her way back to her feet on her own. She waddled over to the dragon on stiff knees, and with a good tug she pried her staff from its maw.

 

     Planting the end in the snow, she leaned upon it and grinned. “That’s how it’s done, and don’t ya forget it!” she panted. Glenvar stared at the steaming corpse. His gaze shifted to his mother, back to the corpse, and settled on his mother once more.

“ _That’s_ why ya brought me out here? To relive yer glory days?” he queried doubtfully.

 

     Oggsa’s grin sank into a scowl. She raised her staff and thwacked her son on the head with it, told him, “Are ya daft, Boy? If ya thought that was a big, scary, sucker,” she gestured to the corpse, “then ya _really_ ain’t ready fer the beasts of the blue! There are things out there that make _him_ look like a worm. Things that can swallow a village whole!”

 

     “I don’t understand why it didn’t swallow _you_ whole!” The boy’s voice cracked in his exasperation. Oggsa dropped her face into her mitten, pushing up her glasses as she scrubbed at her forehead.

A streak of blood was left behind when she pulled it away and sighed, “Glenvar Thunderhorn, what have I told ya time and time again?”

 

     Glenvar shrugged. “Ya blabber a lotta things at me,” he replied, and earned himself another whack on the skull.

Oggsa barked, “Half the battle is muscle and the other half is attitude! That nasty thing could’a easily out-muscled me, eh? But when yer fierce enough, when yer relentless enough, ya tell ‘em their muscle don’t mean a thing. Beasties get mighty nervous when their prey don’t run.”

 

     The woman pointed her staff at him and Glenvar flinched, but she did not strike him. The anger on her face gave way to something more sincere, a little pained, maybe even apologetic. He wasn’t sure, for he’d never seen anything but anger on that face.

 

     Oggsa told him, “And you will always be prey, Glenvar, lest ya join the little gnomes in their forests. But that ain’t yer destiny. The stars pointed ya to the blue to face the biggest, baddest beasties the world has to offer. I just…” Oggsa’s eyes closed and she briefly turned away. Pushing her graying braids aside, she finished, “I just want ya to have a chance.”

 

     A heavy silence passed between them, mother and son both out of their element. Sincerity just didn’t survive in the Thunderhorn clan; it was fought away with fury or deflected with laughter. That’s how it always had been, and Glenvar decided that it always would be when he cracked a smile and snickered, “Heh. That troll really _did_ knock the spine out of ya, ya old jelly-bones.”

 

     Oggsa’s face flushed pink, her mouth creasing as she fought her smile. “Shut yer ugly gob,” she told him, gave him a hearty punch in the shoulder for good measure. She hobbled towards the dragon corpse and Glenvar winced as she reached deep into the wound on its belly, sinking her arm clear up to the shoulder.

 

     “That ain’t the only reason I brought ya here,” she grunted, pulling out knots of slippery innards and tossing them aside. “I got a birthday present for ya. If I can just…Oh, where is that little bastard?” After a few minutes of fishing, Oggsa pulled out an object about the size of her fist.

 

     It was something like a ring of black jet, and in its center was a soft orange light. Glenvar moved closer for a better look. He could feel heat radiating from it like a flame. Oggsa handed it to him and he hesitated before cautiously taking it into his big mittens. “Don’t touch it with yer bare hands,” she said. “It can get hot, melt flesh like butter.”

 

     The boy cocked a blond eyebrow. “What is it?” he asked, turning the strange thing over in his hands.

His mother explained, “It's a _flamcor_. It’s magic. Keep it close to yer heart and you can stand in the most wicked of blizzards, naked as a babe, and the cold will never claim ya.”

 

     Glenvar’s eyes rounded. He turned back to his mother. “Really?”

“It’s true.”

“Ma, we gotta get one of these for everybody! That’s amazing!”

 

     “Can’t just yank ‘em out of any old dragon,” said Oggsa. “They gotta be ancients. Rare. Hundelgi spent weeks trackin’ down this old boy. It’s cold on the Northern Sea, ya know, so…”

 

     “Ya guys did all that fer me?” Glenvar’s brows sagged, a smile tugging at his lips. Oggsa waved a dismissive hand.

“Yer no good if yer dead,” she replied flatly. “That’ll help keep ya alive. But it won’t make ya any smarter, so don’t do nothin’ stupid.”

 

     There wasn’t much daylight to go around this time of year. The sun was already retreating, so Oggsa and Glenvar did the same. Glenvar was transfixed by the glowing artifact in his hands as he surged on, only to realize his mother was no longer by his side.

 

     He stopped and turned around. She was but a dot lagging behind on the horizon. Stuffing the _flamcor_ in his pocket, he ran back to her as fast as his stubby legs would carry him across the snow. Her breath came harshly, her gait even more labored than usual.

 

     Glenvar tried to take her arm and she shoved him away. “Yer hurt!” he growled with frustration. She wouldn’t hear such a thing.

The woman grumbled, “I’m fine.”

“That dragon busted ya up! Quit bein’ stubborn and take my arm.”

 

     Oggsa slapped him away once more. “I’ll take that arm outta yer damn socket if ya don’t leave me alone!”

“ _Ma_!”

“Don’t treat me like an invalid, Boy! ‘Cause I ain’t!”

 

     Glenvar gritted his teeth, a deep breath gusting through his nostrils. He felt the _flamcor_ in the pocket of his coat, its heat seeming to pulsate. He let out a long sigh and said, “Who’s gonna take care of ya, huh? Elgie ‘n Hunnie gotta work, I’ll be at sea—”

 

     “Your damn good-fer-nothin’ father, that’s who _should_ be rottin’ here beside me!” blurted Oggsa. She shook her head, glowering at the ground for a silent moment. Glenvar couldn’t bring himself to respond. He’d never known Vingevar. That was a forbidden name in the Thunderhorn home.

 

     The fury in her brow softened ever so slightly when she said, “Don’t feel like ya have to stay, Glenvar. I gotta…I gotta let all you kids go someday. What happens to me after that ain’t yer problem.” Another silence passed. Glenvar looked up at the darkening sky, listened to the snow crunch under their boots with every step.

 

     They could see the lonely mountain in the distance, the lights of Kirkmar glowing through the fog. Suddenly Glenvar asked, “What happens if ya disobey the stars?”

“Don’t do it, Boy!”

“What happens?”

“Glenvar Thunderhorn!”

“I won’t! But what happens if ya do?”

 

     Oggsa sighed. After a long moment of consideration, she turned to him and replied, “Listen. A boar is greedy and ravenous. It sees somethin’ it wants and it ruins everything in its path to get it...” She stopped for a brief moment to catch her breath, then went on. “They’re raiders, plunderers, and oppressors. A boar takes, it doesn’t give. Well, once there was a big ugly sow, and she was as fierce as she was dumb…”

 

     Disgust crossed the woman’s face. “She met a falcon, handsome and sharp as a blade. The falcon tricked her into giving, and she gave him so much of herself that she became soft. Weak. And there ain’t nothin’ more pathetic than a gutless boar!” She shook her head a little.

 

     She continued, “Thing about falcons is, they’re flyin’ predators. So once he took that sow for all she was worth, he flew away, left her with some nasty debts, a whole lotta shame, and three little piglets. Followed his destiny though, didn’t he? But that boar, she gave away her heart when she should have stolen someone else’s. And the stars, they punished her with all the wasted years.”

 

     The isanae were rising from the snow once more, twirling and swaying along the horizon. Glenvar pressed his teeth together, gaze falling to his boots as his mother finished her tale. “So, what good is a beached whopper?” she asked. “The stars guide ‘em to the sea because that’s where they flourish. I know it’s been rough here on land, but come summer, yer gonna flourish too.”

 

 


	2. Small and Mighty

##  **[CHAPTER 2: SMALL AND MIGHTY]**

 

     The isanae fled from blue skies as the seasons changed, hiding away in the mounains’ everlasting frost until next winter. Their limniad sisters finally rose from the soil to bring life and color back to the tundra. When the last of the snow gave way to red grasses, Glenvar knew it was time to start his journey.

 

     His mother, sisters, friends and neighbors had taught him all that they could before seeing him off. Though 14 years old now, he stood only as high as the boys half his age. He was still just as round and unthreatening as a _rundhund_ pup, complete with patchy whiskers on his face.

 

     His hair was worn loose in yellow waves, grazing his shoulders. The jacket he wore was secondhand from Elgavara. It had belonged to her when she was his age and he yet was still swimming in it.

 

     Every so often, the market vendors had to make a trek to the coast. It was there they picked up more supplies from the docks. Glenvar put his trust in Xydoz to get him there in one piece, loading his one case of belongings onto the troll’s yak-drawn cart.

 

     The sun was a rising sliver on the horizon. By the time it fell tomorrow, they will have arrived in the coastal town of Odens. Glenvar’s family met him at the bottom of the mountain to say their goodbyes as Xydoz prepared the cart. “Do you have enough supplies?” his eldest sister queried.

 

     “Yeah, Elgie,” replied Glenvar. “I told ya, I’ll be fine.”

“What about your _flamcor_?”

“Right here.” Glenvar patted his chest where the _flamcor_ dangled on a cord under his oversized coat.

 

     Rather, it was tucked in a pyriad-leather pouch on a cord. This leather was made from the skin of flame-nymphs and it protected Glenvar’s skin from the object’s heat.

 

     Elgavara trapped him in a crushing hug, discreetly slipping a silver flask in the pocket of his coat. Hundelgi stepped forward and told him, “The dragons hibernate in summer, but ya still need to watch out for bears. If they charge ya, puff up and hold yer ground.”

 

     She paused. Then her eyebrows jumped as she remembered another thing. “And fer gods’ sakes, don’t let yerself get seduced by a nymph! They’re only beautiful on the outside."

Glenvar nodded with a cheeky grin. “Puff up fer nymphs, don’t seduce bears. Gotcha.”

 

     With a roll of her eyes, Hundelgi kneeled down and pulled him in a hug. “I’m serious, Glen. The tundra’s a dangerous place.”

Her brother tossed a glance back at Xydoz, who was tightening the reigns on all four yaks. “Xydoz won’t let anything bad happen to me,” he assured her. “Right, Xydoz?”

 

     The troll replied flippantly, “Xydoz trade all over Red Tundra. Nothing bother big, strong troll.” His eyes narrowed below the deep ridge of his brow. They flicked over to Oggsa as he turned up his palm to her. Oggsa hobbled towards him with her staff, fished about in her coat pocket and dropped a sack of coins into his palm.

 

     “Get him there in one piece,” she muttered. Stuffing the coins in the leather pouch on his belt, Xydoz grunted in response and climbed aboard his cart. He sat upon stacks of crates and furs, some of which he’d bought from the Thunderhorns. Oggsa clapped her hand on her son’s shoulder.

 

     Looking down at him, eye to eye, she had only two words to give. “Be fearless.”

 

*

 

     The tundra was a quiet place even in summer. Glenvar heard only the shuffling of the yaks and the cart’s creaky wheels, occasionally a snort or flatulence from Xydoz. The troll sat in the front seat, manning the reigns while Glenvar reclined on some pelts in back.

 

     Rays of golden sunlight burned through the clouds, opening bright patches of blue in the sky. The white mountain that cradled Kirkmar was growing ever smaller behind them. Ahead, Glenvar could see only an endless horizon of grass, the limniads who tended it and the herds of _elga_ who grazed on it.

 

     There was not a tree in sight. No lakes, no boulders, no ocean either. The air was less frigid the further they moved from the mountain, so much that Glenvar took off his _elga_ skin coat. He couldn’t remember the last time he was able to do that outside. He wore a cotton long-sleeved shirt with a fur vest beneath, skin pants held up with a belt and leather boots on his feet.

 

     Beneath his shirt was the _flamcor_ , dangling from his neck in its special pouch. It hadn’t left Glenvar’s person since he received it. Whenever he began to shiver, the _flamcor_ would pulsate like a beating heart and he felt warmth radiating from his bones outward.

 

     This treasure was beyond price. It was probably best not to speak of it to Xydoz, so Glenvar asked about his homeland instead. “So, Xydoz,” he began, “how does a troll get from Toraag to Halostira? Ya must have taken a boat, right?”

Xydoz never took his eyes off the land ahead as he rumbled, “No boat. Get seasick.”

 

     “Did ya fly, then?”

“No fly. Too expensive.”

“So how’d ya get here?”

 

     Tone even as ever, Xydoz explained, “In Toraag, trolls build big catapult. Troll get in catapult, then troll flung across sea.” Glenvar’s eyebrows nearly jumped off his face.

He sat up, whipping his head towards the troll and cried, “Yer kiddin’! A catapult—No way!”

 

     Xydoz nodded. “Troll land like rocks, not hurt. Sometimes troll not make it. Sometimes don’t go far enough, sometimes go too far…” He cracked a little smile, unseen by Glenvar behind him. “One time, Xydoz saw troll fly into sun.”

 

     The boy’s mouth fell open. “Really?” he exclaimed.

Xydoz insisted, “Xydoz see with own eyes! Catapult throw troll so fast, troll catch fire and become jerky.”

“They go that fast? That’s crazy!”

 

     “Go too fast. Very dangerous. You know, Xydoz once very handsome elf…” He glanced back at Glenvar with a smirk. “…But crash on face and now look like troll,” he finished. The two shared a stare, a crease forming between Glenvar’s brows.

 

     Then, Xydoz burst out into laughter.

Glenvar’s laugh followed, slapping his knee as he roared, “Ya had me goin' there, Xy!”

“Xydoz fool tiny _Maskamar_! Should have seen _Maskamar’s_ face!” the troll laughed.

 

     One of the yaks tried to stop and graze. With a whip of the reigns, Xydoz urged it back on the trail. Once the laughter died down, Glenvar asked, “Come on, how did ya _really_ get here?”

“Real answer not interesting,” the troll admitted. “Wait until winter, when water freeze into bridge. Trolls walk across.” He paused. “Only one time interesting. Heavy troll make ice break. Then swallowed by whopper, gone forever.”

 

     “Is that a joke?”

“Not joke.” Xydoz’ grin faded. “Was Xydoz’ wife, Iiab. Xydoz bad troll, not save Iiab fast enough.”

Glenvar’s grin faded too, curved into a frown. “Oh. I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

The troll lowered his horned head with a small nod. “Iiab was fat, sweaty troll. Smell like a thousand dead fish, collect most flies in Toraag.”

 

     A slight smile returned to his craggy lips, doleful eyes above. “Iiab so beautiful, Xydoz kill all Iiab’s brothers and father to have wedding.”

“You _killed_ ‘em? Why?” Glenvar flipped over on his belly, resting his chin on his fists.

 

     Xydoz replied, “They not give permission to marry. Say Xydoz not have enough pigs!” His nostrils crinkled. “Xydoz come to Halostira for fortune. One day buy pigs, return to Toraag and marry again. But no troll replace Iiab—lumpiest, foulest, meanest of trolls.”

 

     Summer days in Halostira seemed to last forever. The sun just barely fell below the horizon, making it easy to lose track of time. Glenvar only knew it was dinner time when his stomach began to growl. Stopping the cart was dangerous, Xydoz explained, because the tundra offered nowhere to hide.

 

     If nymphs came to rob, if bears showed up to attack, if _grupphund_ picked up their scent and decided to stalk them, there was nothing to do but run—and these old yaks, tethered to a heavy cart, just weren’t up to the challenge. Someone would have to stay awake and watch the horizons.

 

     “ _Maskamar_ ,” decided Xydoz, pointing at Glenvar, “keep watch. Xydoz sleep.” His tone left no room for argument. The troll ate a fistful of mysterious meat, dug a hole to defecate in, and then curled up in the back of the cart. Glenvar sat in the frigid grass nearby and chewed on his _elga_ jerky.

 

     It must have been getting late despite the bright daylight, for there was a sharper chill in the air. Glenvar put his coat back on, and that’s when he noticed the strange weight in his pocket. There was a silver flask inside! His eyebrows arched and he unscrewed the cap, giving the neck a sniff.

 

     Slosh, undoubtedly. Glenvar didn’t hesitate to knock back a swig. The rest he decided to ration and put it back in his pocket.

 

*

 

     Darkness covered the tundra for a little over 2 hours. Glenvar waited there without a fire to warm him, as Xydoz said the smoke would attract unwanted attention. He didn’t need it anyway. The _flamcor_ warmed his bones like a hug from both of his sisters at once—and perhaps his mother too, though Oggsa had never hugged him before.

 

     Oggsa cared for him, he thought. In her own way. She declared her love through threats and beatings, but Glenvar heard from his sisters that it had not always been that way. It was shortly after Glenvar was conceived when Vingevar and a pretty young trader disappeared from Kirkmar.

 

     And it was after that, his sisters say, when Oggsa grew as cold and harsh as the tundra itself. Glenvar had not known her any other way. The _flamcor_ pulsed with the beat of his heart as he sat there in the freezing daylight-night. A generous gift from a ravenous boar.

 

     He liked to think of this warmth as his mother’s love, in the only way she could bear to show it. Kirkmar was a loud and busy place, but out here the silence was deafening. Glenvar had never been so alone with his thoughts. Back home, he would lie in bed and fall asleep to the bustle of all the neighbors around him.

 

     Now there was only wind. Occasionally Xydoz would snore or the yaks would bellow. All around him there was nothing to see but a white spike on the horizon. The lights of home, an eternity away.

 

     Glenvar’s heart began to ache, but there was no turning back. His destiny waited for him at sea.

 

*

 

     Glenvar had nearly nodded off himself by the time Xydoz awoke. Shortly after, they were back on the move. The boy fell asleep in the back of the cart almost immediately. He woke twice: once when he and Xydoz had to replace a broken wheel with the spare, and again several hours later when the road got bumpy.

 

     When Glenvar awoke the second time, he opened his bleary eyes to webs of silver above. He sat up and scrubbed at his face, blinking the blur away. Slowly his surroundings came into focus. The wheels rolled over exposed roots winding all through the soil, leading to silvery, weeping trees.

 

     The boy’s eyes rounded. He struggled to make sense of what he saw, for he had never seen a tree before. All he knew was Kirkmar and the flat, white horizons around it. “What is this? Where are we?” he asked, voice raspy with fatigue.

“Silvertrunk Glen,” Xydoz replied simply. His eyes stayed ahead as he pulled the reigns this way and that, guiding the yaks through the smoothest path.

 

     Slack-jawed, Glenvar turned all around and stared in wonder. “ _This_ is the glen? Hey, my ma’s been through here lots of times! I was born here, ya know!” A toothy smile spread across his face as he turned back to Xydoz, but the troll hardly paid him a grunt in response.

 

     Glenvar’s smile faltered. He furrowed his brow and asked, “Wait. Ain’t we goin’ west, to the coast? Silvertrunk Glen is _north_ of Kirkmar. Did we get turned around?” A seed of panic crept into his voice, sure to grow mighty if he didn’t get answers soon. Xydoz grumbled a non-response until the boy stumbled to the front of the cart and shook him by the shoulder.

 

     “Xydoz! You sleepin’ or what? We’re goin’ the wrong way!” he exclaimed.

After a pause, the troll rumbled an answer, “Uuuh, Xydoz sell supplies first. Lighten load. Then go to Odens.” Glenvar knit his brow even harder, suspicion all over his face.

 

     Something wasn’t right. He felt it in his gut and strangely enough, in his _flamcor_. It was pulsing along with the rapid beat of his heart, radiating heat, making him sweat despite the frigid air. Then again, perhaps the anxiety of change was just overcoming him.

 

     Glenvar sat down again, though his body would not relax, as if his every instinct was urging him to leap from this cart and sprint away. He fished his flask from his pocket and took a long swig. There was still plenty left yet. He stayed quiet and alert as they meandered through the trees.

 

     And then finally, they stopped in a large, circular clearing. Here rested a little village, the structures very unlike those in Kirkmar. They were bulbous shapes woven from stalks of silver bark, branches intertwining to form living buildings. The ground was carpeted with lush, moss and patches of red clover.

 

     People were milling about—all elven as far as Glenvar could see—and none paid the cart any mind as it rolled up to a stop in front of a large building shaped like a tunnel. Big white flowers bloomed all over its silver surface. Glenvar turned around and couldn’t help but stare at the villagers.

 

     They were dressed in colorful cloaks and garments lined with fur. The elves were tall and slender people, nearly identical to humans if not for their angular faces and pointed ears. These elves were mostly pale in complexion with platinum-blond or white hair. Their eyes rich and deep blue, striking against the pallor of their skin.

 

     Glenvar's people--the _Maskamar Volka_ \--dressed themselves in garments which were dull in color and purely functional. These elves, however, seemed to value form moreso. Intricate beadwork accented their clothes from their coats to their boots, all colored with bold dyes.

 

     The cart wobbled as Xydoz clambered out. “Follow Xydoz,” he ordered the boy, and Glenvar hesitated before making his way down.

“What’s this place?” Glenvar whispered.

Xydoz answered as they approached the front of the tunnel-shaped building, “Silvertrunk Village. Xydoz trade here all the time.”

 

     “Aw, piss...I think this is one of the places Kirkmar shakes down…” Glenvar muttered, keeping his head low and obscuring his face behind his long hair. He threw a glance back at the cart. “Don’t we need the supplies?”

“Shut up now,” the troll grunted. “Let Xydoz talk to elves.”

 

     As they approached the building, the solid wall of tightly-woven branches began to wriggle. The jumbled mass disentangled itself in just a couple of seconds and opened a doorway. Glenvar’s eyes bulged, reluctant to pass through until Xydoz gave him a shove.

 

     “Was that magic? That was magic, right?” the boy stammered. Just as he turned around, the doorway closed up again.

“What Xydoz say? Shut up!” the troll grumbled. The building had no windows nor insulation, but it was far from dark or cold in here.

 

     Magical orbs of light floated freely like fireflies, casting everything in a cool glow. Glenvar and Xydoz walked down the mossy aisle. They passed columns of silver trunks on either side, busy elves buzzing this way and that, fine furniture of carved bone.

 

     This place reminded Glenvar of the longhouse in Kirkmar where the chief held court. It seemed that’s just what it was, as they soon approached a tarnished throne of silver. An elfenne sat upon its white fur seat, drumming her long, slender fingers on the armrest.

 

     Two guards were posted by her sides. They were dressed in identical leather armor of red and gold, armed with wooden crystal-tipped staffs.

 

     A white fur hat sat upon her head, accented with a shiny gold bow. Her dress, too, was accented with gold beads upon deep blue velvet all lined with white fur. Her boots were shiny and black as a hare’s eye. She regarded the two outsiders with a piercing blue gaze, expression hardening when it fell upon Glenvar.

 

     Xydoz dropped to one knee and tipped his head before addressing this elfenne. He said, “Greetings, Queen Kultajaa. Xydoz return with best deals. Today, have special offer.” He stood up and clapped a massive hand on Glenvar’s back. “This is _Maskamar_ Grand Warrior’s offspring. Xydoz sell for ten thousand GP. No haggle.”

 

     Glenvar’s jaw dropped, eyes rounding. His head whipped towards the troll. “What? Xydoz—you can’t—You’re _selling_ me?” he blurted. He felt the troll's claws dig into his coat, holding him in place.

Kultajaa raised an eyebrow as she replied, her voice like cracking ice, “Surely you're jokin'. That fat little grub can't possibly be the son of Oggsa.”

 

     “Hey! Up yers, hob!” the boy growled, twisting in Xydoz’ grip. Kultajaa narrowed her eyes.

The troll told her, “Xydoz not lie to best customer. Queen ransom _Maskamar_ , see Kirkmar pay big coin. Or kill _Maskamar_. Not matter to Xydoz.”

 

     The _flamcor_ was hammering with the boy’s heart, heat raging through his veins. “I can’t believe this!” he shouted. “Xydoz, are ya kiddin’ me? I’ve known ya since I was in diapers! All this fer what? Some damn coin?” He frantically squirmed in the troll’s grip but it was no use, his claws were sunk through the padding of his coat.

 

     Raising her palm, Kultajaa said, “You've served my village well over the years, Xydoz, but I gotta be cautious when so much gold is at stake. Both you and the _Maskamar_ boy will be detained until a messenger returns from Kirkmar. When we confirm his identity, you'll be paid and released.”

 

     “Yeah? So yer sellin’ me back to my ma, right?” Glenvar queried with a hopeful inflection. The elfenne’s eyes met his, blue to blue.

“Your presence is greater than your weight in gold,” she began. “You will ensure the village’s safety. I think I'll keep you here with a blade to your neck, and if your people value your life, maybe they'll think twice before messin' with Silvertrunk Village again.”

 

     Glenvar’s face was turning red with fury. The disrespect! The utter betrayal! He let out a cracking war cry and flailed his limbs at Xydoz, feet and hands bouncing harmlessly off the troll’s rough skin. Xydoz simply rumbled a chuckle while Kultajaa stood up and said, “Hold him 'till I get a messenger in here. Guards? Fetch Luistella.”

 

     One of the guards took off running while Glenvar shouted curses at Xydoz, fighting him all the while.

“Xydoz help _Maskamar_ , _Maskamar_ help Xydoz,” the troll explained. “Little _Maskamar_ too pathetic, will die at sea. Life good with elves. Now Xydoz can afford many, many pigs! Marry all females in Toraag!”

 

     Glenvar shouted, “This is wrong! Ya can’t just sell people! That’s _evil_ , Xydoz! I’d rather die at the bottom of the blue than slave away fer some damn elves!”

“Stupid _Maskamar_ not know what’s best,” said Xydoz. He gave the boy a little shake. “Stop fighting. Only get tired.”

 

     Glenvar obeyed. He stood there for a moment, panting, silent in thought. Xydoz was right. This wasn’t getting him anywhere. He had to think of something and fast, because just then the messenger arrived. She rode upon a big bull _elga_ trotting down the aisle, a fur-clad elfenne with white hair in a long, intricate braid.

 

     The _elga_ had no saddle, only a colorful wool blanket strapped to its back. Reigns made from braided hair were attached to its antlers, decorated with beads and tiny silver bells that jingled with every step. “Luistella,” began the queen, “I need you to deliver a message to Kirkmar…”

 

     Glenvar’s gaze fixated on the _elga_. A creature with swiftness and grace disproportionate to its size, cream-colored fur with tufts of white around its neck and hooves. Long lashes curved out from its black eyes. It stood twice Glenvar’s height at the shoulder alone.

 

     He looked back at the queen, reciting her message for Kirkmar. Then he looked up at Xydoz, smirking into oblivion like he was already planning his new life in Toraag. Glenvar looked back at the _elga_ once more and Hundelgi’s words echoed in his head:

 

     _“How do ya think we bring down a beast twice our size?”_

 

     In a flash, he whipped the flask from his pocket and slipped out of his oversized jacket. Xydoz barely had time to react before the boy had charged all of his weight against the back of the troll’s leg. It did not budge and he remained standing. Xydoz looked down at the boy with a mix of confusion and annoyance. They shared a couple seconds of silence, then Glenvar barked, "Sorry, cheap shot!" before driving his knee into the troll's groin.

 

     This time, Xydoz dropped like a stone. His knees hit the floor and now he faced Glenvar at eye-level. The boy was holding a glowing _flamcor_ in one hand and tipping back a silver flask with the other. The queen, her guards, and the messenger turned to him. Just as Xydoz began to speak, Glenvar spit a mouthful of slosh through the glowing ring of the _flamcor_ and it burst into raining flame.

 

     The troll reeled back with a mighty bellow, clawing at his sizzling eyes. Glenvar whirled around and spit another mouthful of fire towards the elves. They scattered away, garments aflame, and the frightened _elga_ reared up. Luistella was thrown, the back of her head thumping against the mossy ground.

 

     She was left dazed, struggling to get back to her feet as the rest of the longhouse exploded into panic. Elves were evacuating, the guards rolling about to extinguish themselves. The queen shrieked, slapped at her flaming garments as she backed into a wall.

 

     The living wall writhed at the fire’s touch. It too ignited and its woven branches went haywire, whipping about like a cluster of panicked snakes. Gaps opened in the wall and air rushed into the longhouse. It only fed the flames while Glenvar tucked the _flamcor_ back in its pouch and rushed towards the bucking _elga_.

 

     He was devising this so-called plan as he went. Blinding Xydoz was deliberate. Burning down the whole village was not. Glenvar realized why he hadn’t seen a single candle or firepit since he got here. The silvery wood, while enchanted, was as flammable as paper.

 

     The pigments that colored the villagers’ clothing also burned hot. Panicked elves in the crowd were pushed into the guards and became ignited themselves. Meanwhile Glenvar was struggling to climb onto the _elga_. He had it by the reigns, but it only kicked and yanked him about like a ragdoll.

    

     “Calm down, ya dumb beast! I'm tryin' to get us out alive!” Glenvar growled. He grabbed the animal by its front leg and hefted it with all of his might. All those years hauling driftwood and pelts paid off when the _elga_ tipped onto its side.

 

     Seizing the opportunity, Glenvar hopped onto its back while it was down. The animal quickly rose to its feet and seemed to be less panicked with the weight of a jockey in its saddle. It stopped bucking long enough for Glenvar to guide the reigns, pointing it in the direction of the exit.

 

     He kicked his heels and the _elga_ was off. It leaped over screaming elves and plowed into anyone who got in its way. The whole structure was twisting and squirming like silver worms, half of it blackened and dead. Chunks of the walls and ceiling burned away and exposed the interior to daylight.

 

     The _elga_ reared up when a chunk of burning silverwood nearly collapsed upon it. Glenvar tightened his grip on the reigns and pulled it in a new direction. As he turned, he saw Xydoz sticking out like a sore thumb among all the slender, pallid elves. He stumbled around blindly, arms outstretched, while the queen and her guards were lost among the chaos.

 

     A large fault opened up in the wall, its edges blackened and wriggling. Glenvar steered his mount through and it swiftly crossed the clearing. Outside, the panic had spread and villagers were desperately searching for snow to throw onto the fire. Summertime was cruel that way, Glenvar supposed, and then in seconds he was bounding through the silver woods.

 

     Trunks sped by and their hanging branches whipped the boy in the face. The assault was relentless until finally, he was greeted by the big open tundra and an even bigger open sky.

 

 

*

 

     The white mountain disappeared over the horizon. Glenvar fled as far away from the forest as the _elga_ would go. He lost track of the hours and eventually, the beast grew stubborn and defiant. It dropped to its knees and let out a grunt. It would move no more.

 

     Glenvar patted the _elga_ on the head before sliding off its back, taking the opportunity to stretch his legs. His thighs were aching and burning, burning and aching after such a long ride. His luggage was back at Silvertrunk Village and there was no chance he would risk going back to get it.

 

     The whole forest was probably burning by now. He could see a trail of smoke over the hill, a thin dark line stretching up into the sky. Glenvar shielded his eyes and looked up towards the falling sun. Should he follow it west to the ocean and fulfill his destiny?

 

     Or should he retreat back to the mountain and shame his whole family? He saw his mother’s face as clear as day; her anger and disappointment as her son ran home like a coward--especially after burning down one of Kirkmar's largest resources. Those elves provided Kirkmar with nutritious fruit they struggled to get elsewhere. Glenvar had been an embarrassment to the Thunderhorn clan since day one, when he dropped from his mother’s womb two weeks early in the middle of a raid to get that very fruit.

 

     He’d been an embarrassment as a babe, slow to learn and quick to spit up. He’d been an embarrassment as a child, short as a tundra clover and round as a snowball. No, Glenvar decided, he could not continue on this path of shame. He’d wasted all this time flopping about on land when a better life awaited him at sea.

 

     After a brief rest, he clambered back onto the _elga_ and followed the sunset west. His coat was burning in Silvertrunk Village. All he had was this beast, his _flamcor_ , and the empty flask tucked into his belt. No compass, no food or water, no change of clothes or a weapon to defend himself with. Still he pressed on down the path to Odens.

 

     The sun fell briefly and rose once more. Glenvar and the _elga_ —which he named “Jingles”—dared not rest. At some point, Jingles’ jingly silver bells attracted a pack of _grupphund_. Each of these snarling canines averaged 200 pounds of tooth and muscle with thick smoke-colored coats.

 

     Jingles trotted over the rolling plain of red clover, huffing and puffing all the while. Glenvar didn’t have to slap his behind to get him moving—he could sense the four predators on their trail. The _grupphund_ lagged about a half-mile back, moving without haste as if they were confident they’d get their meal in due time.

 

     Glenvar saw thick morning fog in the distance. The air was getting colder as they approached and he knew there must have been water ahead. He was so close, so very close, maybe five or six hours from Odens. If he could lose these _grupphund_ , he’d be home free.

 

     The sun inched its way across the sky. Steam gusted from Jingles’ nostrils with every gasping breath. He was beginning to slow down. Glenvar patted the _elga’s_ neck and encouraged him, “Come on, Jingles. Don’t stop or we’re done for. We’re almost there!”

 

     The animal staggered on. Glenvar looked back at the _grupphund_ prowling behind them. They were but four dark shadows, their yellow eyes like cinders glowing through the fog. The boy grasped the reigns as Jingles suddenly bucked. He dug his heels in, throwing his arms around his neck.

 

     The animal shook and bellowed. He tried to shake Glenvar like water off his back, but Glenvar held tight and shouted, “Jingles, no! Quit it! Heel!” It wasn’t until the _elga_ tossed himself on his back that the boy was forced to let go. He rolled out of the way just before he was crushed under nearly a half-ton.

 

     Jingles was quick to scramble back to his feet and Glenvar was too, snatching the braided-hair reigns once more. Letting out a screeching bellow, the beast jerked its head and the rusty old ringlets attaching the braid to his antlers snapped.

 

     “Jingles!” screamed Glenvar. “Get yer sorry ass back here!” But the _elga_ was far beyond the point of obedience, dashing off into the fog. Braid of bells in hand, Glenvar chased him as fast as his stubby legs would carry him. It was a pathetic sight and not long before he gave up. Jingles was gone.

 

     If these legs couldn’t catch an _elga_ , they surely couldn’t outrun a _grupphund_. Glenvar saw the shadows advancing in the distance. They must have seen the whole embarrassing affair, for they had picked up speed and were trotting ever closer. Glenvar glanced back to the fog and racked his brain for solutions.

 

     This couldn’t be his demise. His journey couldn’t end here, not when he’d gotten so far! Not when he’d overcome all he had! It couldn’t be for naught. He realized running away was not an option. Then he remembered more sage advice from Hundelgi—something about seducing bears or something.

 

     “Shite on me,” he cursed when he realized what he must do. A deep breath came in and then out through his nostrils. Glenvar faced his prowling foes and clenched the braid of bells in his fist. After one more slow inhale, he sprinted forth with a booming wail.

 

     The _grupphund_ stopped in their tracks. Their pointed ears tilted up towards the sky. Furiously shaking the bells and screaming like a banshee, Glenvar ran towards them like he fully intended to tackle them. And he just might have to, he thought, as he grew closer and they still held their ground.

 

     Hair rose on the ridges of the _grupphund’s_ backs. Their ears tilted from the sky to their tails. One by one they began to shuffle backwards. The largest still stood tall, staring Glenvar down with its yellow eyes, confident it would call his bluff. It soon realized Glenvar wasn’t one to back out of a fight when the boy charged into it head-on.

 

     Glenvar and the _grupphund_ went tumbling along the ground. The other beasts yelped and skittered back while boy wrestled beast in a losing battle. The alpha _grupphund_ snapped Glenvar’s furry white vest in its mighty jaws, shaking him about like a piece of meat.

 

     With a growl and a good yank, Glenvar managed to pull out of the animal’s grasp. A chunk of his vest remained in its jaw like the limp corpse of a hare. The _grupphund_ spit it aside and lunged again. Its maw was a canyon of gleaming yellow teeth and spraying saliva, heading straight for Glenvar’s face.

 

     Adrenaline surged through the boy’s veins and his hands came up in a flash. They held each end of the braid and that’s where the _grupphund’s_ teeth sank. Glenvar acted quickly, jamming it against the back of its throat. He then wrapped the ends around the back of the beast’s head while tackling it onto the ground.

 

     It snarled and writhed beneath Glenvar as the boy quickly tied the ends of the braid. He nearly lost his grip a couple times but persevered, and now his foe was subdued. He rolled off its back and scrambled away. Behind him, the _grupphund_ whimpered and dragged its head along the ground, trying desperately to dislodge the braid from its mouth.

 

     But the braid was securely tied behind its neck, little bells jingling in its furious struggle. It could not close its mouth in such a pathetic state, so it wouldn’t be snapping at anything any time soon.

 

     Before he left, Glenvar needed to be sure the others wouldn’t follow. He charged the other _grupphund_ , howled, “What are ya lookin’ at? Get outta here!” and they turned tail, scampering backwards several feet. They regarded him with uncertain stares. “I said ‘piss off’!” he roared and charged once more. The second time was enough to send them away for good, as they began trotting and did not turn back.

 

     Glenvar stood there, panting and watching them go. The _flamcor_ burned against his heart like a bad case of indigestion. He considered leaving then, but he became fixated on the subdued _grupphund_. Drool oozed from its open mouth, gurgling and whimpering while it rolled helplessly about in the grass.

 

     The braid was tied tight. The beast would never be able to dislodge it, and surely starve to death eventually. It was a cruel fate. So cruel that Glenvar couldn’t bring himself to leave it, and he cautiously approached the animal. “Listen up, Snapper. I bet yer just as hungry as I am…” he began.

 

     He crept up to its face and the _grupphund_ snarled, whipping its maw towards him but helpless to do anything more. Glenvar jumped back. He continued, “So let’s make a deal. Ya take me to Odens and I’ll turn ya loose. I mean, ya scared off my ride, so I think ya owe me.”

 

     The boy approached once more. When Snapper jerked back, Glenvar seized it by the braid at the back of its neck. He slung his leg over its back and the _grupphund_ was having none of it. It spun and undulated and writhed—did everything in its power to toss him, but Glenvar clasped his hands together around its neck and held tight.

 

     “Ya ain’t winnin’ this one, beast!” he growled. “I’m starvin’, I’m tired, and I'm outta slosh! Yer takin’ me to the coast and that’s that!” That said, he threw his body weight to the side and sent the _grupphund_ tumbling down. Then Glenvar dropped his elbow into its neck, pinning it to the ground.

 

     It gave a half-hearted struggle, but it was simply worn out. Loud, steaming breaths rushed from its mouth and reeked of carrion. Glenvar held it there and they glared eye-to-eye for the better part of 2 minutes, until finally, the beast went limp and admitted defeat.

 

     “That’s what I thought,” mumbled Glenvar, and then he yanked Snapper back to her feet by the scruff of her neck. He actually wasn’t sure if she was female or not, but she kind of reminded him of Hundelgi, all full of piss and vinegar. He climbed upon her back once more and this time, she did not shake him off.

 

     He held the braid and leaned forward, clicking his tongue. The _grupphund_ lurched, seemed to understand. She staggered a few paces, then accepted the weight on her back and carried him off into the fog.

*

 

     The cold wind whipped through Glenvar’s long hair, smelling of smoke and brine. He shielded his face from the assault while Snapper moved forward towards the boxy silhouettes in the distance. Glenvar could only assume it was the skyline of Odens; its pointed roofs and thousands of lights spilling along the icy coast.

 

     Of course Glenvar had never been here. What he knew was from the mouths of his people—most of which had never been here either. Supposedly Odens was a Folkvar Kingdom territory, and the only one they could manage to hold on Halostira. It was a fishing town with a port where all kinds of trading occurred. Vendors from Halostiran villages would bring goods to and from here.

 

     Kirkmar was no exception. Glenvar wondered how many goods in his life had come across these waters and through this very town. Wood, iron, gold, spices and even chickens—these things were not native to this land. If Odens’ port was the heart of Halostira, its trade routes were the arteries. Traders were blood keeping the continents’ peoples alive.

 

     However, these traders would have no goods if it weren’t for the sea. Glenvar needed to find the docks and soon he would be part of the chain. After years of aimless puttering and shame, he would finally _be_ somebody. He was moving down an actual road now, marked by a dirt path and years’ worth of wagon tracks.

 

     He and Snapper passed a few vendors with carts and cattle. The strangers stared with wide eyes but said nothing. Never had they seen a human ride a _grupphund_ , Glenvar was sure, for neither had he until today. About a quarter-mile outside town, he dismounted the beast.

 

     “That’s far enough,” he said. Snapper regarded him with an exhausted, hateful glare. “Thanks fer the ride. Guess I should hold up my end of the bargain, huh?” An equally exhausted little grin crossed his face. The _grupphund_ froze in place, body rigid as he struggled to untie the braid.

 

     The second the knot was undone, Snapper wriggled away and spit the braid onto the grass. She pawed at her face for several seconds while Glenvar cautiously watched, taking a defensive stance. He half-expected her to lunge at him. She could have with ease if she chose. Could have torn him to shreds before anyone came to his rescue.

 

     Instead, she paid him one last glare before sprinting away, bounding off over the hill. Apparently she accepted their truce. The fog was starting to burn off now, exposing the shapes and colors of the town ahead. Glenvar walked the rest of the way down the road. His legs ached, his head ached, his stomach ached, and he was in desperate need of a wash.

 

     The way he felt was written all over his haggard face, red with windburn and filthy with grime. Though once he entered Odens proper, he hardly looked out of place. This was a town of great inequality; its economy a sharp pyramid with the wealthiest sitting at the top-most point and their workers filling the heavy base.

 

     Vendors lie somewhere in-between, but they were foreigners always coming and going. The locals Glenvar saw in the streets looked just as worn-out and filthy as he was after crossing the tundra and narrowly escaping death.

 

     Many were cold and hungry, few were washed, all were barely keeping their heads above water with their meager earnings. Their tattered fur clothing was a testament to that. The buildings here were not subterranean, constructed from cobblestone and imported wood from Folkvar Kingdom. Glenvar could tell it was imported, for it was dark and solid unlike the driftwood native to this land.

 

     These buildings had windows of glass and shingled roofs that came up to sharp points. Great icicles dangled from their eaves like teeth, some as round as a man and twice as tall. Cold wind blew in from the sea and covered everything in a layer of frost and brine. Glenvar stepped into an open plaza and from here he could see the water.

 

     Odens was elevated on a stony hill. Stairways and ramps were carved into the cliffside where people constantly moved up and down, many of them pushing carts. At least a dozen large ships bobbed in the water by the docks and Glenvar couldn’t count how many smaller rafts and fishing dinghies floated between them.

 

     Further out were white glaciers, massive islands of ice that were nearly continents in themselves. Around them was the dark Northern Sea that stretched out into the foggy abyss. Glenvar stood there and gawked, dumbfounded at the sight before him. The wind blew his hair around and he hardly noticed the way it stuck to his lips, teased at his eyeballs.

 

     So this was the ocean. Somehow it was exactly as described and yet nothing like Glenvar imagined. Whether he found it beautiful or terrifying or just bizarre—he wasn’t sure. His brain hadn’t decided, couldn’t process such an alien sight just yet. His gaze dropped down to the docks. He watched sailors hauling crates, fishermen picking up their inventory, lazy _rundhund_ waiting for one of them to drop something.

 

     His eyes flicked back up when a spray of water caught his attention. It shot up from something barely surfacing in the distance. Two other creatures surfaced after it in graceful arcs—giant whoppers with black and white markings as stark as coal against snow.

 

     A whole pod was crossing the horizon together. The oldest and largest had dorsal fins which flopped to the side. Glenvar watched them surface one after the other, blasting water into the air to breathe. Then something else shot into the air; dark and round and flailing like mad.

 

     Glenvar squinted. Then his eyes bugged when he realized it was a _rundhund_. A fat, full-grown _rundhund_ flipping through the air like a bird! One of the whoppers had flung it high and then another caught it in its massive jaws just before it hit the water. Just like that, the _rundhund_ and the whoppers disappeared below the blue.

 

     The boy nearly slipped on the icy path as he hurried down to the docks. The ocean was home to a wealth of riches just waiting to be claimed!

 


	3. Walking The Plank

##  **[CHAPTER 3: WALKING THE PLANK]**

 

     “We gets lots of your type up here,” said Captain Bruk. “Whopper-born tundra kids, seekin’ their place in life. But you’ve never set foot on a boat, have you? Never even _seen_ the ocean, just like the rest of ‘em.”

 

     He leaned forward, folding his calloused hands over the desk. He was a burly human pushing 50 years of age with graying windswept hair, skin like an old leather bag. “Some of you don’t have the guts for it. You get seasick and go cryin’ back to your villages before your first year.”

 

     “Others,” he continued, “they don’t have the brains for it. If I had a gold coin for every incompetent crewman I’ve lost to the blue, I’d buy a better ship and piss off to warmer waters. So know this, Shrimp: you ain’t special. Don’t be askin’ for a raise, don’t be gripin’ about the food, and don’t be slackin’ while I got my eyes on you.”

 

     Leaning back in his chair, the captain finished, “So, do you think you can hack it?” Sitting across from him on a wobbly stool was Glenvar, wearing an exhausted grin.

“Buddy,” he said, “ya got no idea what I been through just to get here…”

 

*

 

     _SPRING, 5994_

 

     The warm months brought calm waters and good numbers for Bruk’s fishing business. The cold months brought stormy seas and vomit-stained decks. But Glenvar realized after his first year that every month—every _day_ aboard the Urchin brought back-breaking, dangerous labor.

 

     The Urchin was a leaky old longship that had clearly been in commission for too long, sporting a crew of ten rowers and twelve fishermen, plus Captain Bruk himself at the helm. Glenvar hadn’t seen the man lift a finger since he started the job.

 

     “I already put in my time,” the captain would tell them. “I slaved away for twenty years to buy a ship of my own. You lot could do the same if you weren’t so damn lazy!”

 

     Glenvar spent his first couple weeks aboard the Urchin heaving his lunch over her side. Captain Bruk assaulted him with I-Told-You-Sos and the crew laughed at him all the while. Just as the captain said, Glenvar didn’t have the legs, the stomach, or the brains for life at sea.

 

     He did, however, have one thing on his side: the _flamcor_. When icy water sprayed up the side of the ship, soaked the crew and sent them running for the cabin, it was Glenvar who persevered and kept reeling in the nets. It was Glenvar who braved the freezing hail to toss out crab pots while the others made excuses.

 

     The crew spent 3 days at sea and came home for 2, rain or shine, sun or storm. Glenvar saw crewmen fall overboard, lose extremities to frostbite, and keel over from sheer exhaustion. The _flamcor_ protected Glenvar from the cold and he was too short to fall over the side.

 

     But he had been a victim of exhaustion several times, and Bruk never passed up an opportunity to yell at him for “sleeping on the job” while he lie facedown on the deck. When he wasn’t insulting and threatening his fishermen, the captain was in the lower decks making lewd comments to the women in charge of rowing.

 

     The rowers were an all-female team who Bruk considered too weak and incompetent for upper deck work (despite the way these women managed to maneuver a ship using nothing but their arms.) Such misogyny wasn’t uncommon in Odens, Glenvar quickly discovered, and what a culture shock _that_ was.

 

     Only men were permitted to be fishermen and none of them were allowed to even speak with the rowers. They slept in separate cabins on opposite ends of the ship; Glenvar and the other men crammed into one big room while Bruk enjoyed his private quarters.

 

     Disease was rampant. Sick days were punishable. Morale was terrible. Bruk spared no expense on his own comfort while he fed his crew stale bread and frozen fish (the ones they caught which weren’t good enough to sell.) Water didn’t keep well on ships and the crew was surrounded by water, soaked with it, utterly sick of it, so they drank slosh instead.

 

     After 3 days at sea, the crewmen were bruised-up and boozed-up, black-eyed, wind-burned, and more than ready for their weekend. The Urchin returned to the docks of Odens and they lined up for their pathetic handful of gold for their trouble. Like the others, Glenvar took that gold straight to the Fisheye Tavern.

 

     The boy was a boy no more at 16 years old, a legal adult in Folkvar Kingdom. He was old enough to drink now, though the law never stopped him before. He started putting away as much slosh as he could hold not long after signing on with Bruk, for the work was miserable and being drunk was the only way he could cope with it—the knowledge that this thankless, smelly, torment was his destiny.

 

     Not that he hadn’t hunted for more options. He’d spoken to other captains about work. “You’re too young,” they told him. “You’re too small,” they told him. “You’re too fat,” they told him. Some even turned him away based on his species as a human or his heritage as a _Maskamar_. After all, _Maskamar_ translated to “Man-Killer” in _Volkaspek_.

 

     Bruk didn’t seem to care about any of those things. His entire crew was made up of desperate flops like Glenvar who couldn’t make it anywhere else, and so they were forced to endure his abuse or go hungry.

 

     Another thing Glenvar discovered was the terrible reputation Kirkmar built to outsiders. One crewman knocked out one of his teeth when Glenvar told him where he was from, as the man claimed Kirkmar razed his entire village and that’s how he ended up here, slaving away for Bruk.

 

     Glenvar assumed his mother probably had a hand in that. He had to wonder what she and his sisters were up to as he sat slumped over a dirty table at the Fisheye, sucking down his third stein. He wondered if his sisters had married. He wondered if Oggsa was even still alive.

 

     Life in the tundra was so harsh that truly, any one of them could be dead by now. Maybe all of them were. At this rate, Glenvar would never have enough gold to visit and find out.

 

     “Why are ya doin’ this to me?” he slurred up at the ceiling, addressing the stars beyond it. “I did what ya wanted. I followed my destiny. What did I do wrong, huh?”

 

     He tipped back the last of his drink and thumped the stein on the table. His forehead thumped down with it, long hair pooling around it like a mop. Every strand was filthy with grease and salt. His clothes smelled like dead fish, boots slick with their slime. He hadn’t bothered to wash or change since leaving work an hour prior. Getting a drink in him was always his top priority these days.

 

     Dock workers like Glenvar kept the Fisheye in business. It wasn’t like bars uptown where patrons filled the air with laughter and danced on tables. It was a cheap, dingy place visibly riddled with vermin but the patrons were too bogged down by their depression to complain.

 

     There was no live music, only the low mumble of the patrons as they drank and smoked away their feelings. The air was thick with haze from cigars and the roaring fireplace. It was warm and the drinks were strong, at least.

 

     Glenvar heard the click-clack of hooves approaching his lonely table in the corner of the room. The sound stopped and a feminine voice asked, “You want another one, Sailor?” Glenvar didn’t bother lifting his head to look at her. He knew her voice by now.

He murmured his response against the table, “Keep ‘em comin’, Idda,” and she took his stein away.

 

     Her feet click-clack-clicked as she returned with a full drink. Glenvar finally lifted his head, carrying the same weight on his face as a person twenty years his senior. Idda had a similar look about her, though she actually _was_ twenty years his senior. No one who frequented a place like this was without it.

 

     Idda was a plump satyress, a creature human in shape with brown fur upon her legs and cloven hooves in place of toes. Two stubby horns sprouted from her forehead and her ears looked much like a goat’s. Her complexion was pale and without windburn, the skin of someone who worked indoors.

 

     Her messy hair was pulled into an equally messy ponytail, clad in a corset and a long skirt. She watched Glenvar for a moment, hand on her hip as he knocked back a long swig. When he lowered his glass she told him, “You look about ready to hit the floor. This is your last one, then I want you to get outta here.”

 

     “Aww, Idda—”

“Don’t ‘aww, Idda’ me!” The satyress tapped her palm on the top of his head. “You’re far too young to drink like this. What’s gone so wrong, boy?”

 

     A scowl crossed Glenvar’s bleary face. “I’ll tell ya what’s gone wrong,” he slurred, sweeping his index finger through the air. “The stars fecked me over. They had it out fer me since day one, lemme tell ya! They want me to tangle with the big bad blue, but I’m short as a dworf’s _kirk_ ‘n ugly as a troll’s ass!”

 

     Ida tilted her head to the side. “Ah, so you’re into that Sylvanism stuff then,” she sighed. “Shake that _stars_ nonsense out of your head. Religion is nothin’ but trouble.”

Glenvar wobbled in his seat, planting his palm on the table for balance as he replied, “Ya can’t shake the stars, _stira_! Who else is gonna guide me?”

 

     The satyress shrugged. “You could always choose your own path,” she suggested. Glenvar fell silent for a brief moment, blinking his eyes slightly out of tandem.

Then he argued, “But that don’t make sense! I’m a whopper-boy, my place is at sea! What’s a whopper outta water? He’s a…A _flopper_ , that’s what!”

 

     Ida’s lips stretched into a grin. “Okay, you’ve definitely had enough,” she told him, taking the empty stein from his hand. “Go on home, sleep it off, and think about it when you sober up.”

“Ya can’t stop me! I’ll hit the tavern up the way! And the next and the next!” Glenvar told her as he stumbled away from his seat.

 

     The satyress pushed in his chair with a roll of her eyes. “You won’t make it that far, Darlin’.”

“Don’t tell me what I can’t—I mean, can, uh…” Glenvar’s slurring grew worse with each passing word. He stumbled to the left and his shoulder hit the wall.

 

     Then he doubled over, soiled his boots with vomit. Idda scrubbed at her face and sighed, “You know, why don’t you just take one of our rooms for the night? On the house.”

Coughing up the last of it, Glenvar croaked, “Yeah? Do I get a wench?”

 

     Idda’s grin returned as she took his arm and helped him down the hall. She told him flatly, “Hmm. The stars say ‘ _no’_.”

 

*

 

     All too soon, the weekend was over and Glenvar remembered none of it. He awoke from his drunken stupor to empty pockets once again, and so he trudged off back to the Urchin to work in the miserable rain. “Hey, boys! I got one fer ya. Do we drink to work? Or do we work to drink?” he mused as he and his crewmates pulled up another net. It was brimming with hundreds of wriggling cod.

 

     The others mumbled their agreements. They let the catch spill over the deck to sort through each fish. Captain Bruk stepped up from the lower deck just then, holding a pipe in one hand and adjusting his pants with the other. He paced around his crew and observed as they sorted through the massive pile.

 

     Undersized fish went into a bucket for the crew to eat later. Trash and diseased fish were burned in a furnace. Viable fish were stored away to be sold when they returned, but it seemed they caught more than they bargained for today. The crew shouted out in fright, scrambling back as something vaguely person-shaped arose from the hill of cod.

 

     “Mermaid! Mermaid on deck!” one of the fishermen blared through his cupped hands. The creature looked like a green-skinned young woman with a long, scaly fish tail. She had webbed fingers and toes, her eyes like black pearls, and a head of shimmery blue hair atop her head.

 

     Most concerning was the scaled armor on her body and the spear in her hands. She coiled her tail and sat up upon it, sweeping the spear at the crewmen to keep them at a distance. They chattered amongst themselves, then looked to Bruk for answers.

 

     The captain scolded them, “What’re you clowns bringin’ mermaids on my ship for? Yer wives just that ugly or what?”

“It was a mistake, Captain!” someone replied. “She got netted with the cod! What do we do?” The mermaid’s dark eyes darted between them all, sweeping her spear all around. She was surrounded from all sides.

 

     Bruk fell silent for a moment, scratching at his bearded chin. Finally he answered, “Grab her. Take her into the brig and scrape off them scales. They fetch a good price.”

 

     The mermaid’s eyes rounded. Most of the crew didn’t hesitate to close in on her and she did not go down without a fight. She jabbed at them with her spear, slapped them with her tail, but there was simply too many. One man grabbed the end of her tail and gave it a yank, sending her torso slamming down on the deck.

 

     Another jumped forward and seized her spear. He and another fisherman managed to tug it from her hands as she shrieked and flailed. Glenvar’s jaw dropped, frozen in shock. He turned to the captain who stood nonchalantly to the side, puffing off his pipe while his crew picked up the defenseless, screaming mermaid.

 

     “Hey!” Glenvar barked. Bruk jumped with surprise and nearly dropped his pipe. The crew stopped and turned to Glenvar, who continued, “Is this a joke? Ya can’t skin a damn mermaid! What’s wrong with ya?”

“Sure you can,” replied Bruk. “You just skin ‘em like a fish and toss ‘em back. Sure, they might swim with a wobble but—”

 

     Glenvar shook his head in disbelief, stepped up to the captain and pointed a finger in his face. “That ain’t right, Bruk! I’ve seen ya pull some shady shite before, but this is bad even fer you!” The crew and the mermaid stilled, listening intently.

 

     Lowering his pipe, Bruk glowered down at him and growled, “I think you’ve had too much slosh, Shrimp. ‘Cause I know if you was sober, you would know better than to mouth off to the one who paid for that slosh in the first place! Don’t you know how valuable those scales are?” He turned to the rest of his crew. “Wouldn’t you all like a shiny little bonus?”

 

     An intrigued murmur spread throughout them. The mermaid growled and struggled in their grip to no avail. Face flushed red, Glenvar gave Bruk a shove that nearly knocked him over and shouted, “Feck the money! That,” he pointed to the mermaid, “is a _person_ , Bruk, not a fish!”

 

     The captain shrugged. “Oh? It’s scaly, it swims, and it’s dumb enough to get snagged in a net. Sounds like a fish to me! Am I right, boys?” he raised his hands with a crooked grin and the crewmen cheered, jostling the creature above their heads.

 

     Turning to Glenvar, the captain gave him a shove back. He towered well over a foot above the _Maskamar_ , stooping over him to growl in his face, “Now fall in line, Shrimp, or you’re out of a job.” Glenvar’s gloved hands clenched into trembling fists. With a loud, wet snort, he spit a mouthful of mucus in the man’s face before ramming him to the ground.

 

     “Good! ‘Cause I got nothin’ to lose, and I’d rather _starve_ than work fer the likes of you fer one more second!” he bellowed. The crew exchanged nervous glances, silent as the tundra in winter. Their crewmate was as furious as he was short, as righteous as he was round.

 

     Glenvar then pointed to them and he scolded, “Ya slimebags know this is sick! Toss her back so you can sleep at night without a drink fer once—” He was cut off with a kick to the gut from Bruk, casting him down on his back. Glenvar was quick to scramble up to his feet as the captain advanced, rolling up his sleeves.

 

     “You won’t get a chance to starve,” growled Bruk, “’cause you’re walkin’ the plank!” He lunged to snatch Glenvar by the neck, but the younger man ducked to the side. With the swiftness of a _rundhund_ in the water, Glenvar kicked the back of Bruk’s shin and knocked him to his knees.

 

     Before the captain could rise, Glenvar delivered another kick to his behind. Bruk face-planted into the deck while the crew whooped and hollered. Glenvar was on top of him in a second, furiously, relentlessly, taking shot after shot to his face. The mermaid watched in hopeful awe.

 

     All the thumping and commotion brought the rowers up from the lower deck. One by one, they crept their way to the scene and stared wide-eyed at the bloody brawl. Bruk finally managed to seize Glenvar’s wrist mid-punch and clasped his other hand around his neck.

 

     He let out a snarl and rolled the _Maskamar_ onto his back before shouting, “You lot better get this animal off me or you’re _all_ out of the job!” Immediately, the mermaid was forgotten and dropped to the deck while the entire crew—fishers and rowers alike—piled onto Glenvar.

 

     No matter how hot his fury, Glenvar couldn’t take them all. As the crew subdued him, they never noticed the mermaid dragging herself over the side of the boat.

 

 

*

 

     The sea had grown calm over the last hour. In that hour, Glenvar was thrown in the brig and made to wait. It was too dark to see, but he heard rats skittering around his cell, felt them crawl over his feet. The _flamcor_ pulsed beneath his coat as fast and furious as his heart.

 

     Bruk showed up eventually and led him to the upper deck by his binds. His hands were tied behind his back so that he could not swim, for they indeed had decided he was going overboard. At this point, Glenvar couldn’t bring himself to care. His destiny was a miserable joke.

 

     His crewmates were lined up at the plank, separated in two nearly-even rows by gender. Both the rowers and fishers scowled at him, spit and made foul remarks as he passed. “You cheated us out of our gold!” they said. “Ain’t that like a _Maskamar_ to muck up everything!” they said.

 

     Glenvar climbed the stepladder to the side of the vessel. Bruk gave him a shove forward and he staggered down the plank. There he stood, staring down into the blue. Maybe this is what the stars had planned for him all along, he thought. This was the end goal, and so why would they waste their power making him strong, smart, or handsome?

 

     This life had been a waste. Glenvar Thunderhorn was born a nobody and he would die a nobody, right here where he belonged among the whoppers in the icy sea. Maybe he was paying for his mother’s blunders or the blunders of his sisters, or some blunder as a child he’d long forgotten.

 

     It hardly mattered. He was paying the ultimate price now. “If anyone asks,” began Captain Bruk, “the _Maskamar_ fell overboard by his own stupidity. But let’s not kid ourselves, Boys, he really has done this to himself!” He turned to Glenvar, speaking to the back of his head. “Glenvar Thunderhorn, you face the penalty of death for insubordination and attempted murder of your captain!”

 

     The young man’s hair began blowing in the sudden wind. “I wasn’t tryin’ to kill ya, piss-bag,” Glenvar replied with a roll of his eyes. “I was tryin’ to knock some sense in to ya! But ya know what you are, Bruk?” He craned his neck to glare back at the captain. “Yer a boar. Yer greedy and ravenous, and ya ruin everything in yer path to get what ya want.”

 

     Bruk furrowed his brow. He stepped forward and queried flatly, “What’s yer point?” The ship creaked as the water grew more turbulent.

It bobbed and Glenvar almost wobbled off the plank, but he regained his balance and said, “Ain’t no point. I just know a pig when I see one.”

 

     With that, he swiveled back towards the sea. “Keep rollin’ in yer own shite,” he continued. “I’ll be swimmin’ with the stars.” The captain grit his teeth, face flushing pink. He stormed up the steps and down the plank. Glenvar heard him coming from behind, _stomp stomp stomp_ , and closed his eyes, braced for a cold, wet, impact.

 

     Bruk raised his leg to deliver a kick. Then he put it back down to stabilize himself as something crashed against the ship. Bruk fell to his knees and clung to the plank, but Glenvar lost his balance, teeth clenching, face scrunching as he prepared for the cold shock of the Northern Sea.

 

     Truly, nothing could have prepared him. His eyes and mouth snapped open the moment he splashed in, all the air rushing from his lungs in one silent scream. The _flamcor_ suddenly burst to life under his coat. It burned red-hot and a flurry of bubbles boiled around it.

 

     Glenvar felt its magic coursing through him, felt the warmth drawing out the cold. Though he wouldn’t freeze, he was still floating helplessly under the raging water. He was upside-down then rightside-up, spinning forward then backward in the waves.

 

     He saw the bottom of the boat above. Then he saw something else, something so massive that he mistook it for an iceberg. It actually _was_ an iceberg, but it was attached to the back of a leviathan creature the likes of which he’d never seen. Glenvar’s whole body was smaller than one of its two eyes.

 

     The beast was something like a whale, just a hair bigger than the big blues. Its skin was mottled like a corpse and two long, straight tusks protruded from the sides of its mouth. These tusks seemed to be made of ice, much like the iceberg growing out of its back.

 

     Most of the iceberg was submerged. Only the very tip was surfaced and it had struck the Urchin, breaching a fault in its rickety hull. Glenvar kicked his feet and tugged at his binds, trying desperately to get to the surface. But the whale-monster was making such great waves, he may as well have been plankton floating in the current.

 

     The ship was fairing no better. It was going down quickly and Glenvar saw his crewmates floating around him, flailing their limbs in the icy water, trying to gain control. They were abandoning ship with nowhere to go, jumping to their cold deaths. He understood why when he got turned around again, facing the whale once more.

 

     He watched as it pierced the hull with its icy tusks. They stabbed straight through the wood like a spear through a fish, and then with a great heave, it launched the Urchin high into the air. It went up in one piece and came down in thousands. Planks, crates, dead fish, and crewmates plummeted into the sea.

 

     Glenvar saw nothing but chaos, felt only warmth in his veins and the burning of his lungs. His vision was going black.

 

     And then, he was gone.

 

*

 

     …Or so he had thought.

 

     Glenvar hadn’t expected to open his eyes again. Yet here he was, staring blearily up at rows upon rows of white icicles hanging high above. His whole body ached. His coat was torn to shreds and blood was dribbling down his face from wounds unseen.

 

     Despite all that, at least he could say he wasn’t cold. Before he even sat up, he pulled the front of his coat open and felt around for the _flamcor_. It was still secure in its pyriad leather pouch, looped around his neck and torso where it had been for the last three years.

 

     With a long sigh of relief, Glenvar struggled to sit up and blinked the brine from his eyes. Wherever he was, it was dim. The only source of light was a beam shining through a hole in the ceiling. This seemed to be some kind of icy cavern, though the “stone” looked and smelled like meat with a bad case of frostburn.

 

     Stranger yet, the cavern was in motion. Glenvar thought he was simply dizzy from near-drowning, but as he stood up he felt the slight undulation around him. It was quiet here, much like the tundra but far less open. Glenvar tried to speak but only coughed.

 

     A gush of salty water rose from his throat and splattered between his feet. He realized one of his boots was gone, leaving only a tattered, wet sock behind. He rasped into the unknown, “Hello? A-anyone there? Anyone…?” His voice did not echo as he expected. Like the snow in the tundra, the walls seemed to absorb sound.

 

     Just then, something touched his shoulder. Glenvar nearly jumped out of his skin. He whirled around so fast that he toppled on his behind, facing another mermaid. No—she was not a mermaid, but a sirene. It was an easy mistake, for the two looked so similar.

 

     But the sirenes could not change forms, would never have legs. This sirene had brown skin and a fat body, legs tapering off into a black and white tail. Her eyes were lined by similar white markings, tail resembling that of the whoppers Glenvar saw when he arrived in Odens.

 

     Her straight, black hair shimmered like an oil slick, trailing all the way down to her waist. Her body was draped in several pounds of chunky jewelry crafted from pearls, crystals, stones, and shells. A smile spread across her jet-black lips as she spoke. “Fear not. You’re safe here,” she told him.

 

     The young man blinked, trying to make sense of things as his memory returned. He stammered, “Who are you?”

And the mysterious sirene replied with decided calmness, “I’m a friend. My name is Salina.”

“And I’m Marina!” another voice exclaimed, jumpstarting Glenvar’s heart once again.

 

     He rolled over and scrambled back in his sitting position, facing a second sirene. She was slimmer and paler than Salina with a tail of rainbow scales. She too was covered in a tangle of jewelry that jingled with every move. She had a head of long, wavy hair of coral-pink.

 

     “Salina, Marina,” Glenvar muttered, eyes darting between the two. “What do you want? Where am I?”

Salina extended her arms and gestured to the cavern around them. She said, “Why, you’re in the belly of a floeback whale!”

 

     “A…” Glenvar furrowed his brow. “A _what_?”

“You know,” said Marina, “those big fellas with the ice on their backs? They’re hard to miss.” She paused, then added, “I mean, if you’re aquarian like us! I suppose up there on land, they just look like icebergs, don’t they?”

 

     “I’m sure you’re very confused,” began Salina.

Glenvar exclaimed, “Ya got that right!”

“So let me explain,” she continued. “Marina and I watch over all the world’s waters and its creatures. We are divines of the aquarians and we speak for the sea. Are you with me?”

 

     “ _No_ ,” Glenvar admitted, looking more exasperated by the moment. He drew his knees to his chest and hugged them tight.

Marina broke in with a rapid wave of her hands, bracelets jingling, “Okay, okay, how about this…”

 

     She spoke the next words slowly as if speaking to a child. “We are like messengers to the _stars_ who guide their lovely and devout peoples. Does that make sense?”

“Stars?” Glenvar raised his eyebrows. His knees sank down and he straightened his posture, looking between them both. “Listen, _stiras_. It ain’t nice to play tricks on a guy when his brain’s leakin’ out his ears…”

 

     “Oh, that’s just seawater. You’ll be fine,” Salina told him with a dismissive wave. “Besides, we are sirenes and sirenes are fae. Fae cannot tell lies, you know. What we’re telling you is the truth. You are in the presence of two ancient, immortal divines.”

"Lookin' good for our age, aren't we?" Marina grinned ear-to-ear.

 

     Pausing for entirely too long, Glenvar stared hard at the frozen meat-floor and contemplated whether he was truly asleep or awake, alive or dead. He looked back up at the sirenes and asked, “So, if yer so almighty and important, what are ya doin’ in the belly of a whopper?”

 

     “He’s not getting it…” grumbled Marina, scrubbing at her face.

Salina patiently explained, “Is it not a beautiful and grand creature? A mobile palace in itself! We forged the floebacks together, Marina and I, many ages ago.”

 

     “Yeah, and now we can’t get rid of them. Sorry about that,” added Marina.

Salina hushed her and continued, “Anyway, Boy, a little fish told us of your deed. You were willing to sacrifice yourself on behalf of an aquarian who meant nothing to you, and for that, we wanted to show our appreciation.”

 

     “Huh?” Glenvar narrowed his eyes, racking his brain for a moment before the memory came back to him. “Oh! Ya mean that mermaid? Hey, that was nothin’. I was…Ya know…” He swiped at the back of his neck, eyes rolling up towards the ceiling. “Ready to walk that plank anyway…”

 

     A soft smile crossed Salina’s face, eyes both gentle and alien as they bore into his. “No need to be modest, Glenvar. The whale star has told us much about you.” She reached forth and touched his chest with her finger, pressing into the _flamcor_ beneath his shirt.

 

     She went on, “You have a heart of flame, and you’ve managed to stay warm despite the harsh winter around you.”

“Literally and figuratively,” added Marina.

Salina quieted her with a raised palm and continued, “I think I know the perfect way to repay you for your deed. We are benevolent divines, after all.”

“Mostly,” said Marina.

 

     Glenvar slowly stood up, eyeing them warily. “Yer not gonna magic me into seafoam or somethin', are ya? I mean, I’ve heard stories.”

At this, the sirenes laughed. Salina tucked her hair behind her pointed ear and shook her head. “Oh, Glenvar,” she began. “The whale-star tells us you’re a well-meaning fool. You’ve nearly driven yourself to ruin trying to seize your destiny, but that is not the way of the whale…”

 

     She gestured again to the caverns around her. “A whale goes with the ever-changing flow, drifts wherever the current may take them. And the current, mind you, will always lead to their next meal.”

Marina explained more tersely, “She’s saying you need to relax a little.”

 

     “I’m _saying_ ,” clarified Salina, “that you must allow yourself to deviate from this path you’ve carved in stone. We don’t always end up in the road we’ve chosen, but that doesn’t mean it will lead to failure. We would like to give you something to help you in your journeys, wherever they may take you.”

 

     She shot a knowing glance at the other sirene and together, they pressed their hands to the _flamcor_ dangling in front of Glenvar’s heart.

 

     Glenvar stood before them, silent and still. He felt the _flamcor_ beat in time with his pulse, then faster and faster still. It grew hot and its sharp heat surged through his body like shockwaves, knocking him to his knees. He grit his teeth and clenched his fists, though the feeling was not painful nor pleasant. It was simply _intense_ , consuming his whole being unlike anything he’d ever felt before.

 

     “W-what are ya doin’?” he groaned through gritted teeth. He forced one eye open to watch as their hands sunk deeper against his chest. Seconds later, their palms were pressing flush against his skin. When they withdrew, everything between their hands and his skin was burned away.

 

     His shirt had a big blackened hole around the left side of his chest and even the pyriad leather pouch was reduced to smoking shreds. The flamcor was nowhere to be found, but beneath his skin right where his heart was located, Glenvar saw a faint glow in the shape of a ring.

 

     His blue eyes bugged. He clutched at his chest, clawing frantically at the glowing flesh. He looked back at the sirenes, horrified, and exclaimed, “What is this? What did ya do to me?” They just met him with calm smiles.

Salina said, “Nothing harmful, I promise you. Your heart and the _flamcor_ are now one, and as long as you shall live, you will never suffer the cold.”

 

     Glenvar didn’t look any less anxious as he stared down at the ring. “Ah, jeez…This _can’t_ be healthy…” he mumbled. His gaze flicked back to Marina, then Salina. “So, wait. Why are _you_ guys doin’ all this for me? What about my star—where’s that lazy bastard been?”

 

     “Well,” said Marina, gesturing vaguely to the ceiling, “they’re waaaaay up in the cosmos, and we’re kind of already here, so…”

Salina told him, “We divines work together. We must, or the world would cease to function! We all just want what's best for our great spirit, Looming Gaia—” She bit her tongue, pausing briefly. “Well, _most_ of us do.”

 

     Glenvar rubbed at the spot over his heart, still undecided if he was comfortable having a magical object lodged in it or not. It was too late to fret about it now, he supposed, for he had not been forsaken by his star after all.

 

*

 

     The route from Halostira to Noalen was treacherous. Ships passed to and fro on all days, at all hours, and countless lie skeletonized at the bottom of the sea. This route was rife with trade ships full of gold. Following the trade ships were pirate ships full of slaves. Following the pirate ships were hungry leviathans, and following the leviathans were even bigger leviathans.

 

     The divines’ floeback was the biggest leviathan of all. It had nothing to fear except warmer seas. It passed the ships unseen, mistaken for a drifting iceberg. But it could go no further, as it would melt and die in these foreign waters, so Glenvar had to disembark somewhere in the middle of this route.

 

     Though it was the heaviest mammal on Looming Gaia, stealth was the floeback’s greatest asset. It drifted parallel with a Folkvar trade ship, a mid-sized wooden vessel with two sails. Gracefully the floeback maneuvered its iceberg around the hull without crashing into it.

 

     The floeback opened its jaw and sea water flooded its cavernous body. Then it sprayed the water from its blowhole and out of the tip of its iceberg like a geyser. Glenvar went shooting up with it, wailing and flailing in the air. The floeback gave the ship a gentle nudge and Glenvar landed with a loud, wet, splat onto the deck.

 

     Fish, seaweed, and trash rained down around him—all things that were sucked into the floeback’s maw. The vessel’s passengers ran about in a panic until the last droplets of water had settled. Glenvar was soaked but the _flamcor_ in his heart kept his temperature consistent regardless.

 

     Letting out a groan as he rolled over on his belly, Glenvar coughed up some water and slowly staggered to his feet. The divines promised him they would “get him on a boat to Noalen”. They just never told him _how_. Though sore, all his parts seemed to be in-tact. So Glenvar stepped around the fish flopping about on the deck to make his way to the upper cabin.

 

     The door opened to a dim room lit by flickering candles. He was met with chatter and laughter all around, with dozens of passengers enjoying drinks at the bolted-down tables. Glenvar’s gaze gravitated to a bar at the back of the room and then he was gravitating there himself.

 

     Holding the edge of the counter, he hefted himself on the tall bar stool; a sopping wet mess with tattered clothes, a missing boot, and seaweed in his hair. He felt the scrutiny of other patrons but it mattered not. All that mattered to him now was drinking away the rest of this trip.

 

     The bartender stopped before him, face blanching. “Gods! Did you fall overboard, fella?” he asked.

Glenvar began stripping off his waterlogged gloves and mumbled, “Sure, we’ll go with that. Help a _maska_ get sloshed, will ya? It’s been a long day.”

 

     “Five GP per pint,” said the bartender, and Glenvar reached in his coat pocket…Only to discover it was full of holes just like the rest of his clothes. He always kept a few coins in his boot, so he reached for that next. That boot just happened to be the one missing.

 

     Glenvar let out a long groan and shot a pleading look at the bartender. “Uh,” he cleared his throat, “I think the blue swallowed my money. Can I get one on the house?” The bartender’s mouth stretched into a thin line.

He replied flatly, “Yeah, I’ve heard that one before. Pay up or drink the bilge water, fella.”

 

     The _flamcor_ suddenly thumped in Glenvar’s chest. His blood ran hot and his face flushed red. He was so exhausted, so overwhelmed—

 

     “Alright, listen here!” barked Glenvar, climbing onto the counter. He pointed a finger in the recoiling bartender’s face. “I just punched up my captain, walked the plank, got chewed up ‘n then spit out by a whopper just to get here, and all I want is a damn drink! Can ya do that fer me, _fella_?”

 

     He spat the last word, spraying saliva forth. His hands trembled with fury and desperation. Before the bartender could reply, someone had grabbed Glenvar’s arm and turned him around. Now he was facing a human man maybe in his 20’s. The man had short-cropped hair of sandy brown and about 2 days of stubble dusting his face.

 

     He was dressed in well-worn armor with a shield on his back and a sword at his hip. His arms were exposed, enormous muscles leading up to broad shoulders. He would have dwarfed Glenvar by over a foot had the _Maskamar_ not been standing on the counter.

 

     “Hey there, friend,” the man said calmly, “let’s not do anything we’ll regret, huh?”

Glenvar’s eyes rounded and then narrowed beneath a furrowed brow. He jerked his arm out of the man’s grip and spat, “And just who do ya think _you_ are?”

 

     “Evan Atlas, Freelance Good Guy,” the man replied with a polite smile. He tipped his head towards a slimmer man sitting beside him and continued, “My associate and I are just trying to relax after a rather arduous contract. It’d be a shame if things got rough in here. Why don’t you have a seat and relax too?”

 

     The nerve! Glenvar wailed, “Relax? I ain’t had a drink all day and yer tellin’ me to _relax_? Piss off, ya goon!” Glenvar grit his teeth, couldn’t control his anger as he gave Evan a shove with his foot. It barely moved him and Glenvar ended up pushing himself back further than the man, stumbling and falling off the counter.

 

     His back hit the shelves and several bottles shattered around him. Patrons turned their heads and broke out into drunken laughter while Glenvar scrambled back to his feet. Evan covered his mouth, poorly concealing a chuckle. His associate silently hunched over the counter, unamused.

 

     The associate was a lanky man covered head-to-toe in leather armor. He had a bow and quiver strapped to his back. His species, unknown, for a dark green hood was pulled over his head and a bandana was tied around the lower half of his face, exposing only a stripe of brown skin around his eyes. He briefly tugged the bandana down every time he sipped his drink.

 

     Glenvar snatched the neck of a broken bottle and rounded the counter. He brandished it at Evan as he growled, “Ya think it’s funny, do ya? Go ahead, laugh again!”

He swung the bottle and the mercenary didn’t flinch, just caught his wrist and told him with a patient smile, “Now, Boy, don’t pick a fight you can’t finish.”

 

     “I ain’t no _boy_!” Glenvar snarled.

“You’re sure acting like one,” the mercenary told him in the same tone he might speak to a toddler. “I think you need a good time-out in the brig.”

 

     The patronization was only making Glenvar’s fury burn hotter. His _flamcor_ burned right along with it, glowing bright under his skin. He cried out as he twisted in Evan’s iron grip like a fish in a net, but the mercenary just chuckled and so too did the other patrons.

 

     Evan’s mysterious associate just shook his head and took another swig from his glass. Then Glenvar noticed a weak point—Evan’s right leg. Or lack thereof. It ended in a metal peg just below the knee. Glenvar hooked his foot around the peg and yanked it towards him.

 

     The metal point slipped against the wood and Evan went down like a stone. He flailed and fell on his back, armor clanging against the floor. Patrons whooped and laughed in surprise, but Evan’s associate was far less amused. He quickly stood up and whipped a dagger from his belt.

 

     “Come get it, Stretch! I’ll take ya down too!” Glenvar jeered and shook the broken bottle at him. The associate glared at him with piercing brown eyes, striding forward with murderous intent. Before they collided, Evan shot up between them, pushing them apart.

 

     “Gentlemen, please!” he said. He turned to his associate and tipped his head at the dagger. “Put it away, Lukas. He’s just a feisty young dworf having a bad day.”

 

     Glenvar’s muscles tensed from his head to his toes. Years of childhood bullying erupted inside him all at once. “Dworf? _Dworf_? Did ya just call me a damn _dworf_?” he crowed, and then he tossed the bottle aside and got a running start before jumping on Evan’s torso.

 

     His hands closed around the mercenary’s muscular neck, feet planted flat against his metal chest plate. Evan staggered back and Lukas rushed in to pry Glenvar away, but the two were locked tightly together as hares in spring. The patrons went wild and the bartender hurried to sweep up all the glass.

 

     The brawl was suddenly interrupted when a crewmember burst through the door. “Attention! Attention all passengers!” he wailed. The room quieted and all eyes had shifted to him. He was panting as he continued, “Pirates are boarding the vessel as we speak! Please remain calm and—”

 

     About a dozen other people flooded in just then, one of them locking the crewmember in a chokehold. They were a mixed group of humans, satyrs, and elves—all dressed in long, tattered coats with a variety of rusty weapons in hand. One human wearing a feathered hat stepped forward and addressed the patrons. Her coat was deep blue, her long dark hair pulled into a ponytail.

 

     “This is your new captain speaking,” she said. She held a sword in her hand, slowly sweeping it around the room. “All of you will surrender your goods or die. Now hands on your heads, knees on the ground!” The murmuring patrons were quick to obey, dropping to their knees with a series of thuds.

 

     The passengers were but simple travelers and vendors, half of them drunk and unfit for a fight. All except the two mercenaries and Glenvar, who remained standing tall. The pirate captain grit her teeth and snarled at them, “I said, ‘knees on the ground’!”

Drawing his sword and shield, Evan replied sternly, “I’m afraid I’ll need some convincing, fair lady!”

 

     He then stooped to Glenvar’s level and muttered, “Well, do we have a truce?”

Glenvar cracked his knuckles and replied, “Fer now.”

“Then for now, you're part of our crew," said Lukas. He offered his dagger to Glenvar, handle-first. "Think you can take on a dozen pirates?"

 

     Glenvar snatched the weapon and laughed. “Buddy, I’m the son of a warlord. A dozen pirates ain't half as scary as my ma!"

 

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I'm an amateur writer so any feedback is appreciated. :)


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